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RUBENS AND ISABELLA BRANDT 
Old Pinakothek, Munich (1609-1610) 



RUBENS 



BY 

LOUIS HOURTICQ 

Inspector of Fine Arts of the City of Paris 



Translated by FREDERICK STREET 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

DUFFIELD & COMPANY 

1918 



<;t 






Copyright, 1917, by 
DUFFIELD & COMPANY 






!EC 10 1917 



©CI.A47796 



V; 



CONTENTS 

PART FIRST (i 577-1609) 

CHAP. p AGE 

I. Birth of Rubens 3 

II. Flemish Painting at Antwerp and Rubens' Teachers . 9 

III. Rubens in Italy 18 

IV. What Rubens Owes to Italy 27 

PART SECOND (1609-1626) 

I. Return of Rubens and His Installation at Antwerp . 39 

II. His Methods of Work 55 

III. Crucifixions 70 

IV. Mythological Pictures 77 

V. Saints and Assumptions 86 

VI. Adorations of the Magi 93 

VII. The Medici Gallery 98 

PART THIRD (1626-1640) 

I. Rubens as Ambassador 113 

II. The Lyric Quality of Rubens 121 

III. Helena Fourment 129 

IV. Landscapes 141 

V. Religious Pictures, Martyrs and "Holy Conversations" 151 

VI. Death of Rubens 163 

Chronological Table 173 

Catalogue of Principal Works 177 

Notes on the Drawings 185 

Notes on the Engravings 187 

Bibliography 189 

Index 191 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Rubens and Isabella Brandt. (Old Pinakothek, Munich.) Frontispiece > 

FACING PAGE 

The Transfiguration. (Nancy Museum.) 14 

Triptych of St. Ildefonso. (Imperial Museum, Vienna.) .... 24 

The Elevation of the Cross. (Antwerp Cathedral.) 30 

The Way of the Cross. (Brussels Museum.) 60 v 

The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. (Old Pinakothek, Munich.) 64 
The Walk in the Garden. (Old Pinakothek, Munich.) .... 70 

Le Coup de Lance. (Antwerp Museum.) 76 

Diana and Callisto. (The Prado, Madrid.) 80 

The Progress of Silenus. (Old Pinakothek, Munich.) 82 

The Smaller Last Judgment. (Old Pinakothek, Munich.) ... 84 
Saint Ambrose and Theodosius. (Imperial Museum, Vienna.) . 90 

The Adoration of the Magi. (Antwerp Museum.) 94 

Coronation of Marie de M£dicis. (The Louvre.) 98 

The Birth of Louis XIII. (The Louvre.) 102 

The Landing of Marie de Medicis at Marseilles. (Old Pinakothek, 

Munich.) 108 

Assumption of the Virgin. (Antwerp Cathedral.) no 

The Little Fur Coat. (Imperial Museum, Vienna.) 132 

The Garden of Love. (The Prado, Madrid.) 138 

Autumn Landscape, with the Chateau of Steen. (National Gallery, 

London.) 142 

The Kermess. (The Louvre.) 148 

The Descent from the Cross. (Antwerp Cathedral.) 152 

Helena Fourment and Her Children. (The Louvre.) 158 

The Virgin Surrounded by Saints. (Church of St. Jacques, Antwerp.) 172 



RUBENS 



PART FIRST 
(1577-1609) 



RUBENS 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH OF RUBENS 

At the time when Rubens was born the Duke of 
Alva had already had his Spanish bands in Flanders 
for more than ten years. The badly paid soldiers 
were a heavy burden on the peaceful life of the 
country and the prosperous civilisation of the cities, 
for at the least resistance or provocation horrible 
massacres took place of peasants or of city folk. 
The scythe cut without resistance through the thick 
grass. At last the turn of Antwerp came. All the 
treasures of the Indies were hidden behind its walls. 
The Spanish veterans grew impatient and on the 
fourth of November, 1576, in full daylight, they 
raged through the town crying, "Sant Iago! Sant 
Iago! Espafia! Espafia! a sangre! a carne! a 
fuego! a saca!" After them poured a mob of vil- 
lagers and camp followers with bundles of straw 



4 RUBENS 

and torches. The garrison of mercenaries fled and 
the townspeople were slaughtered while trying 
bravely to defend their homes. In the Place de 
Meir they held out for a long time, but it was easy 
for the long Spanish rapiers to pierce unarmed 
bodies. The pavement of the Bourse ran with 
blood and corpses were piled in heaps. At the Grand 
Place the assailants hesitated for a moment. The 
houses were protected like forts and from every 
window arquebuses fired on them. Then that whole 
quarter and the H6tel de Ville began to catch on 
fire. There was no choice but to flee or to be burnt 
alive and the fugitives, carried along in the gen- 
eral panic, were driven into the Scheldt by the 
Spanish cavalry. In all six to eight thousand peo- 
ple were slaughtered, burnt to death or drowned. 
Then came the time to extract all treasures from 
their hiding places. For fifteen days the most 
methodical, ingenious cruelty was exercised to extort 
from the people their money, plate and precious 
stuffs. "Women were hung up entirely naked with 
stones of great weight tied to their feet; men 
stretched out and bound to the floor suffered the 
most shameful and cruel tortures that brutality 
could conceive" (De Thou). A young girl, torn 
from her parents and her betrothed, was stripped of 
her clothes, beaten till the blood came and then 



BIRTH OF RUBENS 5 

driven through the streets before she was killed; 
a woman, discovered in her cellar, was tortured, 
hung, cut down before she was dead, tortured again, 
hung a second time, and then a third. The corpses 
rotted in the streets. Five thousand adventurers 
had turned a sumptuous city of more than a hun- 
dred thousand inhabitants into a smoking and pes- 
tiferous charnel house. 

The awakening was terrible for these merchants 
and peaceful citizens, lulled into security by well- 
being. They were suddenly forced into familiarity 
with horrible fear, dread of massacre, pillage and 
ruin, and in this people, plunged against their will 
into a life and death struggle, fierce feeling was 
temporarily aroused and the peaceful equilibrium 
of moral qualities was destroyed. It was the sons 
of the men who suffered this anguish and disaster 
who applauded Rubens and his school. They found 
their own emotions in an art where robust and 
tranquil health was rent by sudden passion and 
brutality; they recognised the athletic executioners, 
the shrieking martyrs, and the suffering, fainting 
saints. 

A few months after the "Spanish Fury" in Ant- 
werp, Rubens was born on June 28, 1517, at Siegen, 
a little Westphalian town. His family were middle- 
class people from Antwerp — the descendants of tan- 



6 RUBENS 

ners, druggists and apothecaries, and also a few 
notaries and lawyers. His father, Jean Rubens, was 
a graduate of the Universities of Louvain, Padua 
and Rome, doctor in utroque jure, and had married 
the daughter of a prosperous merchant — Maria 
Pypelinckx. He had held from 1561 the dignity 
of Alderman of Antwerp, until the political storms 
overwhelmed his existence. To save his life, like 
many of his fellow-citizens suspected of Calvinism, 
Jean Rubens fled on the arrival of the Duke of 
Alva from Antwerp to Cologne. His misdemeanours 
there prevented a long stay, for he became the lover 
of Anne of Saxony, the wife of William of Nassau, 
who was at that moment leading the Low Countries 
against the Spaniard. The lovers were denounced. 
Jean was arrested, imprisoned, and threatened with 
death. He was saved by his wife. For two years. 
Maria Pypelinckx struggled heroically and ably and 
succeeded in gaining the life and partial liberty of 
her husband. Under bond of good behaviour he 
could live at Siegen. The home was restored and it 
was during this period, between 1573 and 1578, 
that Peter Paul Rubens was born. Philip's birth 
was three years earlier. Later the Rubens family 
was allowed to return to Cologne where the father 
could utilire his connections as a jurist. At heavy 
cost he secured a complete liberation, but died very 



BIRTH OF RUBENS 7 

soon afterwards. Nothing now kept Maria Pype- 
linckx away from her own country. In June, 
1589, she returned to Antwerp. Peter Paul was 
then ten years old. No one cared to remember those 
three years at Siegen; the reason for going there 
was better kept secret, so the mother of the painter 
let it be believed that she had never left Cologne 
during her absence from Antwerp. Her son believed 
it and, until the seventeenth century, all the biog- 
raphies of Peter Paul repeat the legend of his birth 
in Cologne. 

Settled once more in Antwerp, the widow of Jean 
Rubens was able to recover some of her property. 
She lived in the Rue du Couvent, near the Scheldt, 
and sent her two children to the school of Romboul 
Verdonc by the Cathedral. There they met young 
Moretus who was to inherit the great Plantin print- 
ing house, and who always remained their friend. 
It was here that Peter Paul, who already knew a 
little German and French, learnt Latin. As for 
drawing, he practised it as a child will, amusing 
himself by copying the illustrations of Tobias 
Stimmer's Bible. While his brother Philip began a 
brilliant career, thanks to his knowledge of the law, 
Peter Paul was placed as page in the service of a 
great lady, the Countess de Lalaing, widow of the 
Governor of Antwerp. The boy was soon bored 



8 RUBENS 

with this gay, inactive life and begged to be taught 
to paint. This art was always, to quote Guicharden, 
"an important thing, useful and honourable," and 
particularly so at Antwerp. Peter Paul was sent 
to the landscape painter, Tobias Verhaecht, a distant 
connection of the Rubens family. The boy was then 
in his fourteenth year. 

It was not the glorious masterpieces of Ghent 
and Bruges which were given him as models. In 
1600 the old schools had almost disappeared, de- 
serted for the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. Here a 
composite art flourished. Flemish in origin and 
Italian in education, the inheritance from Quentin 
Matsys and the teaching of Raphael mingled in vary- 
ing proportions and with unequal success. 



CHAPTER II 

FLEMISH PAINTING AT ANTWERP AND RUBENS' 

TEACHERS 

Flemish art grew out of a perfection of technique. 
Karl van Mander, after attributing the discovery of 
oil painting to Herbert van Eyck, adds: "Our art 
lacked nothing but this noble practice to match 
nature or represent it." This is the definition of 
Flemish painting. It began at this time, and had 
as its main object to represent nature. Did it in- 
vent or merely perfect its instrument? That no 
one knows, but the Flemings certainly possessed a 
tool of unique power and precision, and to under- 
stand perfectly all the resources of this medium was 
the highest ambition of every painter of the school. 
If their art is religious, it is the religion of a good 
craftsman, of honest and incredibly conscientious 
work. The apprentissage was entirely for dexterity, 
and to sincerely copy a model was the great secret 
of the trade. "Joachim Buecklaer found much diffi- 
culty in painting and colouring well, until the day 



io RUBENS 

when his Uncle Peter taught him to copy every- 
thing from nature; fruits, vegetables, meat, game, 
fish, etc., and this system of study gave him such a 
degree of skill that he became one of the best paint- 
ers of his time, working as if without effort, and 
attaining remarkable control of execution." 1 This 
was the education of all Flemings. The knowledge 
acquired by each artist did not die with him, but 
was handed down as a family or atelier tradition, 
and in this way the Dutch and Flemish schools had 
a long preparation for the miracles of execution 
which they produced later. 

It is a curious history for a school of art. Read 
Karl van Mander: to every name is attached the 
reputation of some special form of dexterity. One 
man has learnt to treat foliage in a charming man- 
ner. Pourbus painted the earthly Paradise in such 
a way that the apple trees could be distinguished 
from the pears and walnuts. What was particularly 
noteworthy in Hans Bol's picture of the Adventure 
of Icarus? "A cliff rising out of the sea, crowned 
by a castle, painted in such a manner that nothing 
better could be desired, the rock is so charmingly 
garnished with moss and plants of many colours." 
Steinwyck, before Peter Neefs, painted only the in- 

» Karl van Mander — Le Livre des Peinlres. 



FLEMISH PAINTING AND TEACHERS II 

tenors of modern churches, another only kitchens, 
another understood to perfection how to paint a 
drummer in a guard-house, and another was a spe- 
cialist in night effects. Many of them painted por- 
traits which were animated and excellent likenesses, 
"getting shadows even in the carnations," and able 
to make life glow in "the tanned faces of the boat- 
men." Technical skill became common. I will not 
dwell on the prowess of a Kelet, who, having aban- 
doned brushes, painted with his ringers and later 
with his toes, producing, according to his friend 
van Mander, admirable pictures. These artists were 
not all of wide scope; their imagination was often 
primitive, but there was not a bungler among them. 

At the period when young Rubens began to paint 
the Flemish school had not belied its origin. It had 
given what it had promised ; it had proved that oil 
painting was the "best method of reproducing nature 
in all its aspects." 

But during the last century something more than 
the Flemish spirit had inspired the Antwerp school. 
The fame of the great Italians had reached Flan- 
ders, and these good workmen were wonderstruck 
before the majesty of Florence and Rome. This 
art of the South had for them a European glory, 
and an irresistible prestige in that it called itself 
the voice of antiquity. These excellent colourists, 



12 RUBENS 

who until now had limited their ambition even in 
historical pictures to the representation of scenes 
from their own times, now tried to detach them- 
selves from this realism to which they were held 
by both habit and taste and to create imposing fic- 
tions. The masterpieces of Italy were spread out 
for cutting, and Cocxie was not at all pleased when 
Jerome published a print of the School of Athens 
by Raphael. He was afraid of the evidences of his 
larceny. But any scruples soon disappeared, and 
they began to make a merit of their thefts. 

"The painters who have stayed long abroad — 
especially in Italy — bring back to us a style which 
greatly surpasses in beauty and elegance the old 
Netherland manner." They at least come back 
with portfolios full of copies and drawings, and 
thereafter the figures of Raphael and Michel- 
angelo peopled their pictures. 

Of course this adaptation was not done without 
some awkwardness. In the hands of these painters 
of peasants and bourgeois, the athletes of Michel- 
angelo and the splendidly draped figures of Raphael 
degenerated somewhat, and, what was much more 
serious, the vivid, limpid colouring of the Flemish 
palette weakened and grew thick. With truth in 
costume, utility and beauty of colour also passed. 
No more Gothic headdresses and caps, no more 



FLEMISH PAINTING AND TEACHERS 13 

pointed shoes, no more collars of fine lace or robes 
of velvet and ermine. Jewels no longer shimmered 
on the rich stuffs of Flanders. Pale colours and 
heavy opaque shadows model the muscles and togas. 
There were undoubtedly some artists who loyally pre- 
served their Flemish inheritance against the foreign 
invasion. Dynasties of painters like the Breughels 
still delight the eye with peasant scenes and frolics, 
quite ignorant of classic proportion, but past masters 
in refinement of colour and decision of touch. 
Nevertheless, at the end of the sixteenth century there 
was not a painter's apprentice in Antwerp who did 
not dream of leaving it. They were drawn to Italy 
by the tales of those who returned and were eager 
to see the marvels which filled their imagination. 
Van Mander speaks of "Rome, that famous and 
seductive city, so ornamented with works of art 
that it seems created for painters." In despair at 
not being able to satisfy this desire Henri Goltzius 
fell into a black melancholy, and finally went into 
a decline and spat blood for at least three years. 
His condition became so serious that he was forced, 
ill or not, to start South. At each stage his health 
improved. This was in 1590, the year that Rubens 
entered the studio of Tobias Verhaecht. 

The three masters under whose hands he passed 
were all pupils of Italy. The first, Tobias Verhaecht, 



i 4 RUBENS 

is little known. We are told that he was esteemed 
as a landscape painter, and, to judge by the few 
pictures certainly his, he painted the hills and vales 
and ruins of Italy rather than the green fields and 
wide horizons of Flanders. Rubens stayed only a 
short time with this master, but worked four years 
in the atelier of van Noort and four in that of Otho 
Venius. 

Van Noort is said, by tradition, to have repre- 
sented the naturalism, frank and full of colour, of 
the Flemish school and Venius the learned correct- 
ness of Italy. The same desire for antithesis has 
classed van Noort as a man of violent and difficult 
temper, in contrast to the suave and courteous 
Venius. Nothing really proves that van Noort was 
brutal and drunken. His pupils were many and 
stayed with him long. What little remains of his 
work shows a Romanist who admired and imitated 
Veronese, with nothing of Breughel. One canvas, 
it is true, in the Church of St. Jacques at Antwerp, 
has superb vigour. It is a group of fishermen in the 
midst of whom St. Peter stands, holding up a huge 
fish. But if this painting is by the master of Rubens 
it proves too much, for it was many years before 
Rubens painted with such force. It would be neces- 
sary to suppose that he had abandoned this strong 
realism to return to it again later. It is more rea- 



FLEMISH PAINTING AND TEACHERS 15 

sonable to take this picture from van Noort than 
to believe, with M. Max Rooses, in the influence of 
a pupil, become master in his turn, on his old in- 
structor, a theory that is possible, because van 
Noort died after Rubens, but hardly probable, as it 
would make a page unique of its kind in the work 
which the author has left us. 

Otho van Veen, who called himself Otho Venius, 
is much better known. Many of his pictures are 
in the museums and churches of Belgium; his biog- 
raphy is not obscure nor his personality undefined. 
Rubens must have desired his lessons because he 
was at that time the most famous painter in the 
Low Countries. He was a man of cultivated mind 
and finished manners whose fortune was due partly 
to the favour of the Archdukes. At Antwerp he had 
been Dean of the Guild of St. Luke and of the 
Society of the Romanists. He had decorated the 
city for the reception of the Archduke Ernst in 
1594. In 1599 he again put triumphal arches over 
the pathway of the Archduke Albert and the 
Archduchess Isabella. Alexander Farnese had at- 
tached him to his person as military engineer. 
Later he was "court painter" before Rubens. This 
brilliant career seems to announce the even more 
brilliant one of his pupil, and the works of Venius 
lead up to those of Rubens. 



16 RUBENS 

Venius is the type of a man who has lost much 
of his own personality by assimilating too well a 
culture that was foreign to his natural talent. His 
painting recalls that of Florence and Rome, and 
is individual only in its vividness of colour and soft 
roundness of drawing. Rubens learnt from him to 
garnish his compositions, to fill his canvas with well- 
placed figures gracefully draped and finely posed, 
and thus prepared himself to appreciate Raphael. 
Venius at the same time taught his pupil his gay, 
soft colour, always warm, except in those deplor- 
able blues. 

When Rubens left this atelier he was no longer 
a student. He was able to sell his pictures. Some 
of them he kept. "The other paintings which are 
beautiful," says the will of Maria Pypelinckx, "be- 
long to Peter Paul who painted them." These 
pictures are not known. His nephew Philip writes 
to de Piles that they were like those of Otho Venius. 
That seems probable, if we remember that ten years 
later, after his return from Italy, Rubens seems to 
have taken up again for a while the palette of 
Venius and his rather stiff style and too fresh 
colouring with, it is true, greater transparency and 
variety in the play of tones. 

Peter Paul had been for two years admitted as a 
master of the Guild of St. Luke. He could after that 



FLEMISH PAINTING AND TEACHERS 1 7 

work at Antwerp in his own atelier, and his success 
determined him to remain there. He was already 
as celebrated as Venius, if we are to believe his 
nephew Philip. But the education of an artist in 
those days was not complete without a journey 
to Rome and to Venice. Up till now his masters 
had merely shown him the reflection of the master- 
pieces of Italy. His longing to see them in their 
own country was irresistible. 



CHAPTER III 

RUBENS IN ITALY 

On May 8, 1600, Rubens received his passport . 
Two days later he was on horseback on his way 
to Venice. There he admired and studied Titian, 
Veronese and Tintoretto, and met a gentleman in the 
suite of the Duke of Mantua, Vincenzo di Gonzaga, 
who was passing through the town. The duke had 
the painter brought to him, valued his skill as a 
copyist, and took him into his service, where Rubens 
was to remain for eight years, the duration of his 
stay in Italy. Very soon they left Venice and, 
after a short trip to Florence, where Rubens was 
present at the marriage of Marie de Medicis, the 
sister-in-law of his patron, they returned to Mantua. 

The little ducal court maintained a tradition of 
long standing of luxury and elegance. The Palace 
of Mantua, which represented the tastes of suc- 
cessive dukes and the most successful styles of the 
Renaissance, contained the best of Mantegna's 
works. In the Palace of Te was displayed the 



RUBENS IN ITALY 19 

Mad War of the Giants of Guilio Romano. The gal- 
lery of paintings and statuary was famous through- 
out Europe, and the duke was no less proud of his 
stable and the lions and tigers and crocodiles of his 
menagerie. The life of the Court was passed in 
continual fetes, spectacles, banquets and hunting. 
Vincenzo di Gonzaga, gallant cavalier of thirty-one, 
of a fiery temperament and fickle nature, counted 
a taste for the arts among his other passions. He 
maintained a troupe of actors and famous musicians, 
and sought for learned men and poets. Painters 
had their own place in this cultivated atmosphere. 
Franz Pourbus and Rubens were ordered to copy 
those masterpieces which could not be bought. 
They were also obliged to paint the portraits of the 
most beautiful women, "queens or favourites," a col- 
lection especially dear to the Duke Vincenzo. 

Rubens had, nevertheless, a chance for some origi- 
nal work. While he was at Rome working for his 
master and studying for himself, he received from 
a Spanish prince, Duke Albert, an order for an im- 
portant picture. Just as he was leaving for Brus- 
sels, where he was to undertake the government 
of the Low Countries, the prince remembered that 
he was a cardinal and that his titular church was 
Santa-Croce-in- Jerusalem at Rome, and he ordered 
three paintings from the Flemish master for its 



20 RUBENS 

altar. These paintings are still in existence, but in 
very bad condition, stranded at the municipal 
asylum of Grasse after many adventures. They 
are the first works of Rubens of which we can be 
absolutely certain. They consist of a St. Helena, 
a young woman richly dressed under a portico with 
twisted columns in the midst of a flight of angels; 
an Ecce Homo which owes a great deal to Titian's 
Christ Crowned With Thorns; an Elevation of the 
Cross, inspired by Tintoretto — a huge, oblique cross 
swaying with the effort of the executioners. This is 
a composition to which he returned later on. They 
are heavy, awkward paintings, brutal and uncertain 
in composition, but already they show realistic 
poses and violent gestures. The beginning is medio- 
cre, but still that of Rubens. 

After that he left Italy for a year. The Duke of 
Mantua, whose estate was bordered by the Spanish 
possessions, had everything to fear from such neigh- 
bours. His peace could only be guaranteed by the 
friendship of the new King Philip III. and of the 
Duke of Lerma, his favourite, and of the friends of 
the favourite. He sent, thereupon, an embassy to 
the Court of Madrid with rich presents: a carriage, 
horses, arms and pictures, both copies and origi- 
nals. Such a mission demanded in the ambassador 
intelligence, energy, a fine presence and a culti- 



RUBENS IN ITALY 21 

vated mind. Rubens was made for the position. 
He left on March, 1603, and if we are to judge by 
his correspondence the journey was not without dif- 
ficulty. It began by taking the wrong route, was fol- 
lowed by delay in the progress, increasing expenses 
and trouble with the customs officers. Rubens was 
afraid that his travelling allowance would be in- 
sufficient, and replied with dignity to the criticism 
which he left behind him. The party went very 
slowly and at last embarked at Livorno, and after 
eighteen days spent in the crossing disembarked at 
Alicante. Again disappointments. The Court had 
left Madrid for Valladolid. It was necessary to 
start again for twenty days of travel and twenty 
days of rain. The roads were broken up, and the 
heavy baggage had to be left behind. When it had 
all been gotten together again new disaster was dis- 
covered. His paintings were partly rotted. Luckily 
the king was not there, and before his return every- 
thing was put in order. 

Rubens was resourceful. He retouched the in- 
jured paintings and replaced those hurt beyond 
repair by two pictures which he himself improvised 
— Democritus and Heraclitus. Everything turned 
out well. The king was delighted and the Duke 
of Lerma in ecstasy before the copies, which he took 
for originals. Rubens himself, much congratulated, 



22 RUBENS 

would have been satisfied if the accredited ambassa- 
dor of the Duke of Mantua had not been rather 
lacking in courtesy to the painter, ambassador by 
chance. The favour of the Duke of Lerma recom- 
pensed Rubens. For the minister duke he painted 
a great portrait, "admirably successful" but now 
lost, and a series of Apostles, soft in treatment and 
characterless, at present in the Prado. Neverthe- 
less he was anxious to return to Italy to continue 
his studies. At Valladolid there was nothing. All 
the good paintings which Spain possessed were at 
Madrid, and the Spanish painters inspired him only 
with contempt. After having eluded the difficulties 
of another commission, the duke wished to send him 
to the French Court for his famous gallery of 
"beauties." Rubens at last returned to Mantua 
after an absence of a year. 

Gonzaga, well satisfied with his painter, renewed 
his pension of four hundred ducats a year payable 
every three months, and gave him the work of decor- 
ating the tomb of his mother in the Church of the 
Trinity at Mantua. Rubens painted for this three 
large pictures. In one he represented the duke and 
his father at one side; on the other side his wife 
and his mother kneeling with their eyes lifted up 
towards the Holy Trinity. In the second he re- 
produced the scene of the Transfiguration in almost 



RUBENS IN ITALY 23 

the same way in which Raphael treated it. In the 
third the Baptism of Jesus Christ is half a copy of 
Raphael and half of Michelangelo. These paint- 
ings have been scattered and to-day the first is in 
Mantua, the second at Nancy and the third at 
Antwerp. In spite of their bad condition, we can 
still see Rubens in them. 

Undoubtedly the originator of new compositions 
was not yet born. His imitation is ingenuous like 
that of a schoolboy, and it is not only the figures and 
the grouping which he borrowed, but even the bril- 
liant and luminous colouring of Antwerp thickened 
and grown heavy in imitation of Baroccio and Cara- 
vaggio. Still, the portraits of the duke and the 
duchess show already the real Rubens. Given a 
good model, a Fleming — if he is skillful, is never 
mediocre. The Gonzaga family praying have a 
proud distinction, and their heads are beautiful and 
full of character. The idea of the composition was 
good, and Rubens was to use it again. One of his 
undisputed masterpieces, the Triptych of St. Ilde- 
fonso, gains enormously from two figures, those of 
the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Clara- 
Eugenia, kneeling with the same nobility of attitude. 

After that Rubens scarcely left Rome at all and 
kept on copying famous paintings for the Duke of 
Mantua. He liked to live among the memories of 



24 RUBENS 

antiquity and the Renaissance, and he took part 
in the bitter rivalry of the schools for the public 
favour. That was where reputations were made and 
his genius began to be recognised. For the decora- 
tion of the high altar of a church of the Oratorians, 
the Chiesa-Nuova, the Fleming was preferred to 
such famous artists as Caravaggio, Baroccio, Petro 
de Cortona, Joseppico and Guido Reni. It was a 
large undertaking, a picture of at least twenty 
square yards, and Rubens executed it with the 
greatest care, though he was interrupted by the re- 
quirements of the Duke of Mantua, who obliged 
him to go with him to Genoa. This was the last 
important work done by Rubens in Italy. 

It is also the most beautiful. The composition 
is simple, a group of saints and martyrs, a subject 
that was always dear to Rubens. Two of the figures 
are particularly striking, St. Gregory in an ample 
cope and a gracious and smiling St. Domitilla, 
wrapped in violet and yellow silk with shimmering 
folds. These figures already show the real Rubens 
vigorous and standing firmly on the ground. The 
architecture is enlivened by angels circling around a 
portrait of the Madonna. The lighting is finely 
handled, "the ensemble at the same time brilliant 
and soft, is superb in the handling" (Emil Michel). 
Unluckily when the canvas was put in place it was 




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RUBENS IN ITALY 25 

half lighted and marred by reflections. It was nec- 
essary to replace the brilliant picture by a dull 
one on slate. Rubens began to repeat on a larger 
scale his original work, only modifying slightly its 
composition. He tried to sell the first picture to 
the Duke of Mantua, but without success. Various 
slight pretexts were found for refusing it at the 
very moment when the duchess was ordering Rubens 
to buy the work of a mediocre artist, Pomerancio. 
The St. Gregory followed Rubens to Antwerp, 
and after some retouching decorated the tomb of 
his mother until it was carried off by the armies 
of the Revolution and sent to the Musee of Grenoble. 
It was now eight years since Rubens had left 
Antwerp, and his family were urging him to return. 
In 1602 his brother Philip wrote: "Take care that 
the term of your engagement (with the Duke of 
Mantua) shall not be prolonged." And he warned 
him against the easiness of his own disposition and 
the insistence of his master. The Archduke Albert 
had also asked the Italian prince for the return of 
Rubens, but only to meet with a rather sharp re- 
fusal. The painter remained willingly until he had 
satisfied his longing to know the art of Italy. Then 
only did he wish to return home. His brother, who 
had spent several months with him at Rome, had 
already gone back, recalled by the condition of their 



26 RUBENS 

mother's health. For a while Rubens thought that 
the Duke of Mantua would take him with him to 
the Waters of Spa. The duke went there without 
him, and at that very time Rubens heard that his 
mother's illness had grown much worse. He sprang 
on his horse and left, leaving behind him excuses and 
promises of return, but he never went back. 



CHAPTER IV 

WHAT RUBENS OWES TO ITALY 

After his long stay among the Italian master- 
pieces of the sixteenth century, Rubens returned to 
Antwerp with his memory full of sublime and beau- 
tiful forms which remained vividly with him until 
his last days. From his first important works 
painted at Mantua — his Transfiguration which 
imitated Raphael, his Baptism of Christ which copied 
Michelangelo, until the Virgin Surrounded by Saints 
on the painter's own tomb in the Church of St. 
Jacques, a Santa Conversazione in the Italian man- 
ner, and in which the great St. Jerome is a direct 
reminder of Correggio — the majority of his pictures, 
even those most intimate in their feeling and most 
individual in their handling, prove the persistence of 
his youthful impressions. Everything that was most 
famous in Italy at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, the great works whose fame was European 
— the Last Judgment of Michelangelo, the Descent 
from the Cross of Danielo de Volterra, Raphael's 



28 RUBENS 

Holy Families, Titian's Assumption of the Virgin, 
Domenichino's Communion of St. Jerome — all the 
themes of which a definite form had been determined 
by some masterpiece, all these subjects Rubens took 
up again and developed along the lines laid down by 
the great artists of Florence, Rome and Venice, as if 
to oppose masterpiece to masterpiece, less anxious to 
resemble the Italians than desirous of rivalling them. 
He knew how to make his own the quality which 
distinguished the very great painters who expressed 
the genuine Flemish art as opposed to that of Italy. 
Northern painters are instinctively naturalistic, pas- 
sionate admirers of life and careful to render it with 
all its characteristics, The great masters of the 
Italian Renaissance are above all else decorators. 
They only reproduce human gestures and natural 
objects after bringing their confusion into order and 
forcing them to submit to the exigencies of rhythm. 
The dominating idea with them is always harmony 
which brings unity out of diversity, gives stability 
even to motion and a cadence to disorder. Lines 
framed themselves naturally within the space to 
be decorated. To represent an action means to 
them, first of all, to fill a certain space without 
emptiness or crowding, rectangular, triangular or 
oval, and it is the space of the decoration which de- 
termines the human attitudes and movements which 



WHAT RUBENS OWES TO ITALY 29 

fill it. In front of the great paintings of Veronese 
and the frescoes of Raphael, Rubens the Fleming 
realised the rules to which life must submit in order 
to create beauty, and he retaine # d a feeling for com- 
position that enabled him, without ever weakening 
the savage force of his conceptions, to enclose his 
fancies and impetuosities in an architecture of 
simple lines, perfectly balanced. 

When he left Italy he knew all the secrets of those 
artists. There was not a painter whom he had not 
studied closely and copied attentively. At Mantua, 
in the very palace of the prince, he had filled him- 
self with the learned, archaeological art of Mantegna. 
With him he had entered classic times; he remem- 
bered these exact visions of the ancient world, the 
trophies of a triumph, the Roman eagle, the en- 
graved breast-plate of an imperator. And, if he 
did not imitate the harshness of Mantegna's draw- 
ing with its metallic outlines, he was filled with 
admiration for his feats of perspective. He fre- 
quently used a detail which he owed to Mantegna, a 
corpse on its back, the feet towards the spectator and 
the body foreshortened. At Mantua he had also 
lived in the midst of the forcible paintings of Guilio 
Romano, and had admired the superhuman power 
displayed by those Titans and the pomp of his dig- 
nified processions. 



30 RUBENS 

At Rome he met another artist whose imagination 
like his own loved to produce colossuses. The in- 
fluence of Michelangelo can be seen in the early- 
works of Rubens. The Baptism of Christ and even 
the Elevation of the Cross show the same figures as 
the paintings of the Sistine, long, supple bodies with 
atLletic arms and legs and delicate hands and feet. 
There are the same muscular contortions, twisted 
backs, stiffened bodies which in taking off a tunic 
go through the struggles of a wrestler, the drawing 
of a sculptor which recall the studies of muscles in 
the schools. But very soon the difference between 
the Fleming and the Florentine became marked. 
Michelangelo's giants with their huge, heavy bodies, 
their powerful and slow movements seem to stretch 
wearied limbs exhausted by their own weight, over- 
whelmed by sleep or by death. Those of Rubens 
have springy flesh moved by strong sensations. 
They draw themselves up or relax, trembling with 
pleasure, shaken by great sobs or overcome by 
suffering. 

Raphael also taught him a great deal. Even if 
the great compositions of the Vatican seemed to 
him to confine too much the free movement of life 
in a symmetrical balancing of groups, he knew how 
to make use of the most beautiful of their suggestions : 
a noble old man drawn up to his full height in an 




THE ELEVATION OF THE CROSS 
Antwerp Cathedral (1610) 



WHAT RUBENS OWES TO ITALY 3 1 

attitude which expresses nothing but makes large 
folds in his robe and thus decorates the foreground 
finely ; a large woman on her knees, the body thrown 
backwards ; a young girl with a basket on her head 
and one arm raised, the superb attitude of a cane- 
phore which binds her body and thrusts her hips 
forwards, and many other figures dear to Raphael, 
which appear from time to time in the composi- 
tion of Rubens to add the rhythm of their beau- 
tiful balance. Rubens took also from the Roman 
artist, we might almost say, the entire personnel of 
his Christian Olympus. God the Father, a vener- 
able Saturn, without any other characteristic but his 
long, white beard. Christ, a Jupiter, with an ele- 
gant and vigorous torso and the Apostles with hair 
like shavings, and especially the group of the Holy 
Family with the amiable Madonna, her eyes lowered 
on a plump and curly-headed baby, and in the 
shadow of the middle distance St. Joseph, his chin 
in his hand, thoughtful and insignificant. Rubens 
simply brought these figures near to our human 
flesh and blood; he transformed them partly into 
Flemings, but it was from the necessities of his 
technique, not to satisfy the demands of a new 
poetry. 

Venice especially enthralled Rubens by its mag- 
nificent and sensuous art. Titian revealed the fe- 



32 RUBENS 

male nude to him in its supreme beauty, the splen- 
dours of full forms, the radiancy and tenderness of 
warm and amber-colored flesh. Nothing could have 
touched him more profoundly than that poetry 
which Titian expressed through this healthy, in- 
active, physical life. Nothing ever effaced from his 
memory the dazzling effect of the fairylike decora- 
tions of Veronese. The brilliant nobles in free poses, 
glittering with jewels and shimmering brocade. 
The great patrician ladies robed in white satin slowly 
mounting majestic stairs; the elaborate architec- 
ture and delicate outline of a Corinthian capital 
against a green sky. The impulsive method of Tin- 
toretto showed him how a brutal brush can add some- 
thing more to the violence of a gesture and to the 
rapidity of a movement. All this was new to him. 
The Fleming saw and remembered. 

Correggio finally left a lasting impression on his 
imagination. For in his later years at Antwerp, as 
his art grew more emotional, more intimate and 
more profound, one memory seemed to dominate it 
more and more, that of Correggio with his amorous 
painting, his soft and shadowy faces bent affec- 
tionately towards each other. He was thinking of 
the painter of The Madonna of St. Jerome when 
his heart softened his painter's eye and filled the 
atmosphere of his canvas with love and made the 



WHAT RUBENS OWES TO ITALY 33 

caressing touch of his brush more enveloping and 
warmer. On the other hand, the Bologneso school 
seems to have played but a very small part in train- 
ing his talent. Undoubtedly he made use in his 
own way of the eclecticism of the Carracci, but it 
was as an artist able to thoroughly understand the 
most beautiful forms of art without losing his own 
personality and not as a pupil searching for for- 
mulas. It was more profitable to study the great 
painters in their own works than in the summaries 
of the Bologneso school. Caravaggio interested him 
and held him for a moment by his vigorous con- 
trast of light and shade, but to follow him it was 
necessary to make great sacrifices, darken the clear- 
ness of the day and dull the gorgeous brilliancy of 
colours, and to do that was to pay too dearly for 
force. He discarded this idea very soon, his biog- 
raphers say. 

The colourist in him resented the Italian influence. 
If he seemed to accept for a while the heavy paint- 
ing of Bologna, very soon his Flemish nature freed 
him from it. His own art was so far from that 
of Bologna. The strings which he was to sound had 
other tones and other harmonies than the exhausted 
instrument of the dying Italian art. These artists 
of the decadence had looked too long on the pallid 
statues of antiquity and their painting had kept the 



34 RUBENS 

coldness of the marble. With such models and so 
impoverished a nature they could no longer be of 
interest except by startling through a forced effect 
or by arousing interest through a picture with a 
story. Rubens did not place the subject of the 
painting as more important than the colour. Even 
when he drew a classic bust with charcoal and a 
few touches of red, he softened and warmed the 
shining marble, deepened the eye, gave life to the 
expression, coloured the lips, animated the flesh and 
made you feel the profound living quality under the 
envelope. But when he paints, then, says Guido 
Reni, he mixes blood with the colour. 

The great Italian decorators did not win him over 
by the even and sober radiance of the fresco. There 
the colour keeps the quality of the material on which 
it rests; it always remains plaster just as in tapestry 
it is silk or wool. That is the merit of fresco and 
also its weakness. It gives a mural representation 
of reality without any depth, a design with flattened 
reliefs; it equalises the variety of the colouring, gen- 
eralises the outlines, suppresses the accidents and 
purifies the modelling. Oil painting cannot submit 
to these changes. Rubens possessed a language able 
to express all reality without impoverishing it. With 
his colour he could render the transparency of the 
air, the softness of flesh and the hardness of metal 



WHAT RUBENS OWES TO ITALY 35 

and of stone. He could make the horizons distant, 
bring the foreground near, scatter about everywhere 
small and vivid details, accents of truth which sug- 
gest the thousand accents of reality and, above all, 
from the world of semblance he knew how to bring 
out a dazzling harmony of colour. 

Venice even, in spite of the charm of its use of 
colour, gave him more to admire than to copy. The 
luxury of Veronese seemed to him to be of too sus- 
tained elegance. Not a single strong, fresh tint, 
but broken, medium colours — greens, violets and 
greys. The figures stand out against beautiful, 
clear architecture; white is used prodigally, and the 
even and cold light spreads out under the great 
porticos. This distinction was rather too studied 
for the Fleming. A light red or a vibrant yellow 
there in the midst pleased him as a brilliant phrase 
does in the midst of a too careful eloquence. Though 
he never ceased to have a passionate admiration for 
Titian — and always kept about him some of the 
works or copies of the works of the Venetian master 
— his painting remained always essentially different. 
Undoubtedly he liked his fiery, concentrated colour- 
ing, his serious and strong harmonies; but in Titian's 
colour there is a solidity and depth that eliminates 
the play of reflection, the iridescent surfaces. That 
solidity could be lightened, that gravity made gayer 



36 RUBENS 

so that while the nudes of Titian display themselves 
with tranquil, concentrated voluptuousness in the 
golden light and russet shadows of a summer after- 
noon, those of Rubens, young and blonde, revel 
with the full joy of life in the clear freshness of an 
eternal spring. 

What the Fleming brought back from Italy was 
a clear idea of what he must take and what he must 
leave. His apprenticeship was over; it had lasted 
nearly twenty years. Now Rubens knew all that 
he could learn. He held the secrets of the two great 
European schools. He had not lost the feeling for 
colour of the Flemings; nothing could make him give 
up its tenderness, vigour, lightness and solidity. 
Italy, little by little, had initiated him into the lofty 
feeling of elegant and majestic decoration. His 
mind was enriched by the labours of many centuries 
and the genius of many races. It only remained to 
combine the sumptuous vocabulary of Antwerp 
with the majestic style of Venice and Rome. That 
union was made spontaneously by an artist whose 
imagination was as noble as his temperament was 
sensuous, and who knew how to adorn reality with 
all the graces of poetry, just as he gave to imag- 
inary things the solid beauties of reality. After this 
masterpieces began to appear, and from that day 
on it is like a continuous miracle. 



PART SECOND 
(1609- i 626) 



CHAPTER I 

RETURN OF RUBENS AND HIS INSTALLATION AT 

ANTWERP 

There are two little pictures in the Louvre which 
by their contrast express the changes which trans- 
formed the existence of the bourgeois and peasants 
of Flanders in 1 608-1 609. They are very well 
painted according to the excellent Flemish style, 
where little touches of red or blue bring out clear 
lights in the delicate greys or the transparencies of 
the landscape. 

One of these pictures shows a scene of pillage; 
a squadron of cavalry has just made a raid upon a 
village. The castle still burns, the men-at-arms 
are going into the low doors of the huts, dragging 
out a frightened peasant or a shrieking woman ; here 
there is a naked corpse ; there a body which is being 
stripped or a big man being dragged along by the 
hair. Piled in a hole are some wretched, pitiable 
clowns of Teniers, who are being shot out of hand. 
The horses of the soldiers are waiting for the de- 



40 RUBENS 

parture, and when the sinister work has been finished 
there will not be left behind them either a living 
human being or a herd of cattle. According to his 
custom, the Fleming with little imagination has 
simply painted what he saw. When towns were cap- 
tured the same thing happened, only then the pil- 
laging lasted longer. 

But now the times have changed. A truce has 
been signed between the King of Spain and the peo- 
ple of the United Provinces, and it has put an end 
to the rule of the freebooters. This renaissance is 
displayed to us in a picture by Adriaan van de Venne 
{Fete a V occasion de la treve de i6og). The peasants, 
coming out of their caves, cannot believe their eyes. 
They help to bring muskets, helmets and breast- 
plates, which are piled upon the ground, useless for 
the moment. A close group of nobles and bourgeois 
comes forward, peaceful, without arms, in gorgeous 
holiday clothes, and with genial expressions above 
their spotless ruffs. On the ground are laid out 
dishes, jugs, fruits and pastry. Wine is being 
cooled in the spring nearby. Everyone is about to 
eat well and drink well. There are jester, monkeys 
and musicians. They want to laugh. Two doves 
bill and coo, a cupid puts his foot on a rapier. They 
mean to enjoy all the pleasures of peace. The draw- 
bridges of the castle are lowered, and far away in 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 41 

the blue mist of the distance the clear light which 
brightens the landscape shows that the work in 
the fields has been begun again. In the midst of 
these bourgeois, the Spanish nobles, the Archduke 
Albert and the Infanta Isabella Clara-Eugenia, 
preside over the festivity. The Archduke is not 
handsome, a small, withered man with a strong face, 
enormous lower jaw, and a short, pointed beard. 
Isabella is thoroughly Spanish in her stiff robe, 
heavy headdress and her pale face, which seems 
cadaverous in the midst of the florid Flemings. 
Nevertheless seigneurs and burghers press affection- 
ately around them. They are grateful to the foreign 
princes for presiding over the establishment of peace. 
This gratitude of the Flemish cities shows itself on 
every journey of the Archduke. Wherever they 
arrive the fronts of the houses are covered by flags 
and triumphal arches are raised along their route. 
Rubens returned home at this expansive moment. 
Since the beginning of the patriotic and religious 
war Antwerp had suffered more than any other 
town. She had undergone pillage by the Calvinists 
and the "Spanish Fury." Besieged, taken by as- 
sault by one army, blockaded by the fleet of the 
other, she had suffered peculiarly on account of her 
situation as a frontier town between the two camps, 
and now, weakened in her population, her commerce 



42 RUBENS 

impoverished, torn and weary, her only thought was 
to build up again her ruins. Doubtless the wharves 
on the Escaut were no longer piled with all the 
merchandise of Europe. The streets and the Ex- 
change, formerly so busy, seemed as if deserted; 
but even if her former prosperity had gone, tran- 
quillity had returned. People could no longer grow 
rich, but they could enjoy life in peace. Easier days 
were coming to conceal the economic decline or at 
least to give some consolation for it. The great 
seaport had thus the charm of cities which have lost 
their activity, but preserved their luxury. 

The life of the municipality began again on the 
old lines. The guilds were reformed. Every Sun- 
day the burghers assembled for some religious cere- 
mony, and sat down at a banquet of the guild. On 
that day there appeared resplendent banners and 
the flags of the guilds were paraded between the well- 
washed and thoroughly painted gables of the Place 
de Meir or the Rue des Tanneurs and while from the 
high belfry "thirty-three bells, both large and small, 
rang out in such accord and harmony and so skill- 
fully that one would have thought them a musical 
instrument." 

As "the trades with their symbols, the brother- 
hoods with their armorial bearings and banners, so 
the burghers with good will and devotion," majestic 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 43 

and gorgeous as the Magi, paraded before the ad- 
miration of their fellow-citizens, up to the portal 
of Notre Dame. It is certain that many of them felt 
that it was good to be again at peace with life. 
These guilds of artisans cared for the arts above all 
things, and admired nothing so much as manual 
dexterity and the industries of luxury. The cabi- 
netmakers, goldsmiths and painters worked for 
them. The merchants of Amsterdam or Haarlem, 
the arquebusiers, cloth merchants or rhetoricians 
posed themselves before the painter grouped about 
a council table or at a banquet, attentive and self- 
satisfied, with a pen or a glass in their hand, creat- 
ing large pictures for Calvinists who could not have 
pictures in their churches. At Antwerp and Malines 
the guilds wanted a likeness of their patron saint, 
and a fine likeness of which their patron could be 
proud. The archers and fishmongers have their 
own chapel or altar which they maintain and cover 
with ornaments, and whose beauty expresses the 
piety and the prosperity of the guild. 

Moreover, these unfortunate churches were in 
need of adornment. Many years before the icono- 
clasts in a moment of religious fanaticism had de- 
stroyed centuries of art. The denuded walls were 
as sad as those of a Protestant chapel, and the House 
of God could not be allowed to remain uncomfort- 



44 RUBENS 

able. But they did not stop at repairing the ruins, 
for the pacification came at the time of the Catholic 
renaissance. The clergy had never lost their wealth. 
In every parish the "priest had a large and regular 
revenue" (Guichardin). The religious orders were 
increasing in number. Franciscans, Jesuits, Carmel- 
ites, built convents and also chapels which were really 
huge churches. That of the Jesuits at Antwerp 
astonished their contemporaries by its size and splen- 
dour. The churches, monasteries and other holy 
places, whose number had been surprising even to 
travellers of the preceding century, had increased, 
although the population had decreased. What op- 
portunities and what themes for great decorations! 
Martyrs, the miracles of St. Francis, St. Dominic, 
St. Martin, St. Roch, St. Ignatius, St. Theresa, 
were to occupy the work of the artist. 

The new architecture demanded and showed off 
huge paintings far better than that of the Gothic 
cathedrals. In the beautiful churches of the Middle 
Ages the pictures of Rubens were out of place. They 
could only be satisfactory when framed by an altar 
of black or white marble a la Vignole, such as were 
at that time being built in large numbers in defiance 
of reason and good taste. Besides the Gothic cathe- 
dral had no need of pictures, and did not lend itself 
to them. Daylight only reached the interior cut by 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 45 

the pointed arches and checkered by the windows, 
blotted with shadows, and divided by a forest of 
pillars and small columns, mysterious, changing, 
varying, fairylike as that which filters through to 
the undergrowth in a great wood. The little panels of 
the primitives, brilliant and strongly coloured, could 
stand that artificial light and be framed sympatheti- 
cally in the fretted stone like the miniatures of Mem- 
ling, in the amidst the carving of a reliquary. The 
churches which the Jesuits were building all over 
Catholic Europe offered the painter a greater oppor- 
tunity. They had huge walls, ceilings and panel 
vaults — vaults which could have no other ornament 
but colour. Light came in through large windows, 
and fell evenly on the pictures so that they were 
lighted in almost the same way as in the atelier. 

Political pacification as well as the Catholic renais- 
sance was encouraged by the Archdukes. Their 
government was tolerated. They certainly had no 
popular sympathy, and the little Court of Brussels 
preserved rather too much the stiff and empty 
etiquette of Madrid. But they knew how to flatter 
the tastes of their subjects and they showed them- 
selves to be lovers of painting, and therefore in 
sympathy with the glorious tradition of Flanders! 
They had already approached the Duke of Mantua in 
the hope of bringing home the Antwerp painter. Otho 



46 RUBENS 

Venius was the favourite painter of the Court. 
Rubens, as soon as he reached home, received orders 
and favours. They tried to keep him at Brussels 
but he preferred Antwerp. Nevertheless, on Sep- 
tember 23, 1607, letters patent were signed by which 
he was named painter to the Court of the Arch- 
duke, "for the good report which they have had of 
P. P. Rubens, of his ability and experience in paint- 
ing and several other arts ... at a salary and wage 
of 500 pounds a year, at the rate of forty groz to the 
pound in Flemish money." 

Thus all the influences which in the time of the 
Dukes of Burgundy had aided the development of 
the arts in Flanders appeared together again. The 
Court of the Dukes, the guilds and corporative parish 
clergy, the abbeys and convents, and finally the 
luxury of the middle class, these make up the in- 
fluences which had caused the development of the 
Van Eycks and which was to help the progress of 
Rubens. Hardly had he arrived when the Jesuits 
ordered a Visitation from him, the Dominicans a 
Discussion of the Holy Sacrament, the Aldermen of 
Antwerp an Adoration of the Magi, and the Arch- 
duke at Brussels some portraits and a Holy Family. 

For these reasons the painter, even if he had 
regretted Italy, could hardly dream of leaving his 
country. Besides, he was kept there by his brother 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 47 

Philip, whose niece, Isabella Brandt, daughter of 
Jean Brandt, doctor of laws and municipal clerk, he 
soon married. This marriage was celebrated on 
October 3, 1609, in the Abbey Church of St. Michel; 
and the painter lived for a while in the house of 
his father-in-law. We can imagine what that mar- 
riage was like from the eulogies which Rubens after- 
wards gave of his wife: "An excellent companion 
whom one could or rather one must love, for she 
had none of the faults characteristic of her sex." 
Always in good humour, she was free from all femi- 
nine frailties; she was altogether kind and amiable. 1 
A pleasant portrait in the Pinakothek of Munich 
shows us the painter and his young wife just after 
their marriage. "The charming face of Isabella 
glows with happy content, and in her eyes, with 
their slightly mischievous expression, there shines a 
certain pride in having gained the heart of the great 
artist who had chosen to associate her with his life. 
As for Rubens his face is full of serenity and full of 
confidence in the future, he abandons himself to the 
sweetness of being loved" (Emile Michel). Three 
children were born to him: Clara, who died while 
still young, Albert and Nicholas. 

In May, 1610, an important order gave Rubens 

better to P. Dupuy, July 15, 1616. 



48 RUBENS 

the opportunity to create his first masterpiece. For 
the high altar of the Church of St. Walburgh at 
Antwerp (no longer in existence) he took up again 
the theme of the Erection of the Cross which he 
had already painted during his stay at Rome. The 
work that he did was that of a master. The Cruci- 
fied One is raised slowly by the efforts of nine brutal 
men eager to kill, and if a moral idea has ever been 
expressed by physical gestures it is indeed in this 
work, where the vigour of the muscular force expresses 
cruelty while the Sufferer, with eyes and soul in 
heaven, abandons his captive body to the men of 
wrath. This picture gives an impression of unfor- 
gettable dramatic power, because it is well fitted 
to Rubens' peculiar gifts. By swelling muscles, 
stiffened bodies, clenching hands, twisting necks and 
outstretched legs, the movements of powerful athletes, 
the painter incarnated his favourite visions and at 
the same time was able to express hatred and fury, 
and by them to help the expression of his idea. 

But this picture, which shows the sure skill of 
a master, is still the work of a pupil of the Italians. 
The execution is not characteristic. Pursued by the 
memories of Italy the painter had his imagination 
filled with the Titans of Guilio Romano and especially 
Michelangelo. Notice particularly that striking bald 
colossus, who by his own single effort is raising a cross 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 49 

far heavier than he is. In the works of the Floren- 
tine the struggling bodies seem to be tearing invis- 
ible mountains. In Rubens' picture the body of the 
Crucified seems a very light weight for the display 
of such fierce effort. But the colouring, especially, 
is Italian, Roman. There are very few draperies, 
and these few have bizarre colours and discor- 
dant reflections. There is a great deal of the nude, 
rounded muscles and heavy reddish flesh with 
opaque shadows. The colouring is like the feeling, 
hard and austere; the handling is violent. In the 
terrible drama Rubens has placed no figure of pity, 
no Magdalen in tears, no fainting Virgin. The huge 
woman on the left panel shrieks with horror, excited 
by a violent grief without any tenderness. There is 
a certain tenseness in the picture, the need of dis- 
playing all his strong qualities and not concealing 
any of his skill. Later when Rubens was sure of 
success and thought less of impressing his art on the 
spectators, his work relaxed somewhat, grew freer 
and more personal. Then he passed from startling 
colour to that which is truer, from baked tones 
to fresh ones, from muscle to flesh, from the fierce 
emotion of Italy to the healthy sensuality of Flanders. 
But even as it is that powerful work could not 
pass unnoticed. It proclaimed the superiority of 
Rubens over the other painters, and soon his atelier 



50 RUBENS 

could not hold the pupils who offered themselves. 
The younger men waited in the studios of other 
painters until he had a vacant place. He could not 
take any more pupils. "He could say without any 
exaggeration that he had had to refuse more than 
a hundred." x 

It was now that he organised a regular establish- 
ment. On January, 1611, he bought in the centre 
of Antwerp on the Wapper in the street which 
to-day bears his name, "a house with a fine entrance, 
a court, gallery, kitchen, rooms, grounds and out- 
houses, such as a laundry situated nearby, which on 
the east side touched the wall of the Oath of the 
Arquebusiers, and for which he gave 7,600 florins, 
payable in annual instalments. He was to live 
there ever after. Little by little he enlarged and beau- 
tified his house according to plans which he made 
himself. At the end of the garden he built an Italian 
summer-house which appears in many of his pic- 
tures; and between the house and the garden, a 
colonnade in the same style adorned with busts and 
little columns. The interior was undoubtedly very 
beautiful. When Moretus enlarged his house in 
1620 Woverius wrote him: "Fortunate is Antwerp 
to have two such citizens as Rubens and Moretus. 

'Letter to Jacques de Bic, May 6, 1611. 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 51 

Their houses will be the wonder of strangers and 
visited by travellers." De Piles, who is so well 
informed, gives this detail: "Between the court and 
the garden he had built a hall of a circular form like 
the temple of the Pantheon in Rome, and into which 
light entered only from above and by one opening 
which was in the centre of the dome. That hall was 
full of busts, classic statues and valuable paintings 
which he had brought from Italy and many other 
things very rare and interesting. 

"Everything was placed symmetrically and in 
order, and for this reason many objects worthy to 
be in the collection, but for which there was no place, 
were used to ornament the other rooms in the 
house." In this gallery were classic busts, medals, 
intaglios and also modern paintings; nineteen Ti- 
tians and twenty-one copies of Titian by Rubens, 
seventeen Tintorettos, seven Veroneses, Raphaels, 
German and Flemish Primitives, Romanists, small 
pictures by his friend, the elder Breughel and the 
Brouwers, painters peculiarly valued by Rubens be- 
cause he found in them the Flemish feeling in its 
purity. 

In the midst of this ostentatious luxury Rubens 
led a perfectly well-ordered life. The large estab- 
lishment was provided for by excellent business 
methods. Scrupulous in filling his own contracts,. 



52 



RUBENS 



the painter allowed no delays on the other side. His 
life is a model of organisation and intensive produc- 
tion. There is never a moment of inertia or falling 
off in his work; never was time more filled, faculties 
more used, or force better directed than his. His 
imagination did not blur the clearness of his mind by 
any mirage, his vivid sensitiveness never disturbed 
the balance of his thoughts. His letters are those 
of a serene and peaceful man, and show his disregard 
of all frivolous things, all futile amusements and 
foolish books. Often a stoic phrase or an uncon- 
scious quotation from the humanists will show his 
long intercourse and close sympathy with the an- 
cient philosophers. Over the portal of his garden 
he had cut a verse of Juvenal, the motto of a soul 
ruled by intelligence, safe from desire or fear, sure of 
its inner health, and leaving the rest in the hands 
of God. Rubens' work was increasing and his day 
long and full. He rose at four, went to mass, and 
worked until lunch. He ate little, "for fear that 
the fumes of meat would prevent him from fixing 
his attention," and also because he had "a great 
dislike for excess in food, drink or play," and after 
the meal worked again until four o'clock. He liked 
then to take a ride on horseback outside the city 
walls. The evening was for friends, given entirely 
to talking or writing or reading. 



RETURN OF RUBENS TO ANTWERP 53 

His library was large and important. The pub- 
lisher, Plantin, for whom he made drawings, gave 
him books on natural history, botany, geography, 
physics, religion, philosophy, law, and he interested 
himself in all the science of his time. He was sent 
historical memoirs from France, and had treatises 
on architecture both classic and of the Renaissance. 
His mythology proves that he had read Virgil and 
Ovid. His love of reading was so great and the 
inspiration that he drew from it so useful that often 
while he was painting "a paid reader read aloud to 
him some good book, generally Plutarch or Livy or 
Seneca" (de Piles). He had many friends both at 
home and abroad; princes, great generals, savants, 
noble lords and rich Antwerp burghers loved and 
sought his companionship. Peiresc, fortunate enough 
to receive his letters, declares that he profited much 
by them, and Spinola found that in the qualities of 
his mind painting seemed to be the least of his gifts. 
He did much for painters less fortunate than him- 
self, and his critics as well as his admirers agree 
that this distinguished man was also a lovable one. 
De Piles praises his winning manner, his pleasant 
humour and easy talk, his quick, penetrating mind, 
his way of speaking slowly and his very pleasant 
voice. Felibien says that he was naturally gentle 
and courteous, and had no greater pleasure than to 



54 RUBENS 

be of service to everyone. Without making any 
effort to please, Rubens seems to have lived sur- 
rounded by love and admiration. 

"He was tall, with dignified bearing, regular 
features, red cheeks, chestnut hair, eyes that were 
brilliant with controlled fire, and a manner gentle, 
smiling and honest" (de Piles). All the portraits 
that he has left of himself have a fine and beautiful 
head. The large felt hat and turned-up moustaches 
show him the elegant cavalier that he was. The fea- 
tures are well defined, the direct look from well- 
opened eyes is without timidity or arrogance, and 
behind the high forehead marked with increasing 
baldness one feels a brain always at work, but never 
weary, uncertain or discouraged. He had greatly 
prolonged the period of study and acquisition, and 
the fruit came abundantly and with full flavour. He 
had never met indifference in others or doubt in 
himself; he had never searched painfully for light 
like a plant in the dark. At once, and with all his 
power, he had developed straight and fast in full 
brilliancy. 



CHAPTER II 

HIS METHODS OF WORK 

Having set before his art an aim perfectly adapted 
to the means of painting, Rubens was able to build 
up a sure and solid technique. His process does not 
seem to have ever varied; he kept to the method 
of which he had proved the excellence. If there 
are differences in his work, they are not in the 
metier. 

His aim was to catch and hold, without extin- 
guishing it, the life in human flesh. No man was 
ever more drunk with the poetry of the human 
animal, or has expressed in a more stirring way the 
beauty of material life. In the distinction of his 
style there is always strength and physical grace. 
He loves to twist the body of a healthy young siren 
and make folds in her elastic glowing flesh. It is 
by the action of stretched or contracted muscles that 
he expressed the heroism of his warriors, and the 
pose is best when it shows a violent effort. It is 
in the torture or the relaxation of the body that 



56 RUBENS 

the soul shows its suffering or its joy; the spirit is 
here only a reflection or emanation of the extenuated, 
fainting flesh. Look at the Magdalen prostrated at 
the foot of the cross; the despair of her love is all 
in her streaming eyes, her head thrown back and 
her throat swollen with sobs. Is it possible to find 
in Rubens' works dull moments when his hand was 
careless and his eye indifferent? Certainly they 
exist, but never when he is painting a human being, 
never when his brush is charged with the paint 
which will become flesh. Then his art is always 
stirred with feeling; it is like a love-song in which 
each syllable thrills with devout emotion. 

The method of producing this surprising result 
seems to be always the same. In most of Rubens' 
compositions a torso concentrates on the blonde 
flesh as much light as possible, avoiding the crude 
pallor of wax. On the salient points where the light 
falls directly the flesh takes a milky lustre, produced 
by white and bright yellow; where the light slips off, 
its touch spreads iridescent blues, a delicate veil of 
ultramarine. On brown flesh this blue becomes less 
strong, and on the flesh of a dead body, it is accen- 
tuated and turns to green and violet, if necessary. 
It is the use of this cold, diaphanous colour which 
gives so much freshness to Rubens' nudes. Jor- 
daens, who neglected it, paints heavy, opaque flesh 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 57 

like baked brick, and the nudes of Van Dyck are 
pale ivory and yellow. In the masters' work only 
do they have a transparency which reveals the 
flow of life within, like light behind a porcelain 
shade. 

He keeps the warm, reddish colours for the real 
shadows, but these shadows are never opaque, how- 
ever deep they may be. They are lightly rubbed in, 
in contrast to the thick painting of Correggio and the 
Venetians, and are always touched by a reflection 
of bright vermilion. Rubens, who puts no red in 
his lights, is generous with it here, because red, 
which is heavy and sombre in light, becomes a 
luminous and transparent colour in the shadow. He 
carried the idea so far that even in his drawings, 
when there is a touch of red chalk, it is used in the 
shadow of a fold of flesh. If he paints a corpse he is 
not content with dark lead-coloured tones, but 
makes the blood of the wounds glow on the dead skin. 
Light and transparency are everywhere, and the 
flesh is modelled by exquisite and delicate shades. 
All this was a revolution in Art which greatly scan- 
dalised the critics. Bellori says that Felibien in the 
second half of the seventeenth century found fault 
with an art so different from the Italian. "In the 
colour the flesh tints are often so strong and so de- 
tached from each other that they seem like spots, 



58 RUBENS 

and in the reflections the light makes the bodies 
seem diaphanous and transparent." 1 

Rubens possessed, more than most painters, that 
infallible skill of hand which is as necessary to a 
decorator as ease of speech is to an orator. His 
work is always accurate and quick, yet alive with 
a spirit which puts soul into the small pictures and 
eloquence into the large ones. Some of his paint- 
ings (The Return of the Prodigal, Antwerp) are noth- 
ing but a grisaille in bitumen and dull green hardly 
lighted by a few spots of vermilion and black. In 
this picture the correctness and nervous precision 
of touch have brought out of the half darkness of a 
shed, the many forms enveloped in shadow. The 
brush moves alert and skillful, and we see the coat 
of a horse, the shoulder of a cow, the hairy, spotted 
nakedness of a pig, spiders' webs and hanging dusty 
rags, the worn leather of a halter or gleam of a curb 
chain. 

Without the least suggestion of effort, the careful 
and intelligent handling of the little picture broad- 
ens it until it grows into a huge composition. Rubens 
"confessed himself to be by instinct more fitted to 
make large compositions than little curiosities." 2 
His hand was obedient enough and his eye suni- 

1 Entretiens sur les vies et les ouvrages des plus fameux peintres, II., p. 118. 

2 Letter to William Trumbull, 13 Sept., 1621. 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 59 

ciently sure to paint an enormous canvas with as 
much fire as a simple sketch. His improvisations, 
even when colossal, are painted directly and with- 
out change. The Magi at Antwerp and the Way 
of the Cross at Brussels, two of his largest canvases, 
are painted from end to end in large spots, expres- 
sive and never retouched, used with such perfect 
mastery that they do not have to be reduced even 
when rendering the nude, where correctness of form 
is so necessary that even the most fiery painters 
restrain themselves and become careful and timid. 
Rubens, on the contrary, as in the fishermen of 
Malines and the sirens of the Landing of Marie de 
Medicis, seems only more alert, more inspired and 
his hand more light, attentive and sure. 

This virtuosity is not nervousness. We never find 
here those sharp, quick touches of the brush which 
delight us in Hals and show a sort of feverish im- 
patience. Rubens is calm and master of himself; 
his execution is rapid but not brusque. With a quiet 
hand he lets loose a tumult of colours and lines. His 
work, in spite of its rapidity, has an air of finish. 
He generally used a panel of polished wood on which 
the oily fluid colour only left a smooth, thin covering. 
Not that he feared thick paint, but he saved it for 
the strong lights, the sheen of steel or silk, the gleam 
on a tear or a drop of blood or the foaming crest cf 



60 RUBENS 

a wave. His pliant brush and flowing colours often 
give an unctuous touch, mingled in spite of its firm- 
ness, solid in spite of its softness. In some of his 
pictures which seem to be executed with less con- 
trol than the others the only real difference consists 
of a coarser canvas, thick paint and a stiff brush. 
Rubens' compositions are always extremely sim- 
ple and have been planned without effort; even the 
beginnings of the work are easy. When the action 
is simple it is all in the attitude of one or two figures, 
and the painter has given them without difficulty 
poses that are noble and graceful as well as expres- 
sive. Even when there are a number of people on 
the scene the composition remains uncomplex. A 
circle of attentive faces surrounds a single action, 
and turns towards the most luminous part of the 
canvas. His most beautiful pictures are grouped in 
this way: The Descent from the Cross, Adoration 
of the Magi, Communion of St. Francis, St. Ambrose 
and Theodosius, Coronation of Marie de Medicis, St. 
George on the tomb of the painter. Like ourselves, 
all these people have come to see an imposing spec- 
tacle or to be moved by a tragic scene. Their feel- 
ings are not generally expressed in their faces, yet 
nothing can be more expressive than a face painted 
by Rubens. The secret of his art lies in the univer- 
sal practice of the Flemish school of choosing typi- 




THE WAY OF THE CROSS 
Brussels Museum (completed in 1637) 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 6 1 

cal models, and taking nothing from their char- 
acter. In this lay their great difference from the 
French and Italian artists. Felibien does not fail 
to find fault with Rubens' figures for being "ordi- 
nary and common, not well-proportioned and beau- 
tiful." It was precisely because he took expressive 
faces from nature that Rubens did not have, like 
Poussin and Le' Brun, to fall back on a theatrical 
mechanism that was often caricature. It was from 
around him, in his house, in his city, in the harbour, 
or in the country around Antwerp, that he found 
the men and women, the children and animals, all 
the creatures human and divine which peopled his 
world. Some of them pass once through his work 
and then disappear, others we grow familiar with in 
the pictures of the same epoch. It is probably this 
habit, which explains the criticism of Felibien and 
Bellori, that "all his faces look alike." Because of 
their marked personality these people of Rubens' 
stay in our memory. One remembers the face of 
his Magdalen, of his old men, his warriors and his 
executioners, and recognises them again in another 
picture of the same period. In the pictures of Pous- 
sin and Le Brun, in spite of their abstract likeness, 
the faces do not annoy us by their uniformity. 
They have not the character of a living type which 
alone makes us see and recognise the individual. 



62 RUBENS 

A superb, blonde creature, rounded and golden, 
exuberant in joy and sorrow, was for a long time 
his favourite type of feminine beauty, until the 
coming of his second wife, Helena Fourment. As 
Magdalen she sobbed at the foot of the cross, as 
nymph she frolicked gayly in the sunshine, as nereid 
she made the water boil around her lithe move- 
ments. Isabella Brandt is never more than a figure 
in the second plan ; she only shows herself to lighten 
some corner of the composition with her keen eyes 
and kindly face. She strayed by some chance into 
the drunken cortege of Silenus with the same amuse- 
ment in her face and dimples around her smile. 
Rubens' sons soon became regular figures in the 
drama, and here and there in the garlands of loves 
or the mythological scenes the childish faces of Albert 
and Nicholas appear. Albert, as a charming page, 
holds the mantle of one of the Magi at Malines; 
Nicholas the younger, chubby and pouting, or wide 
awake and smiling, is often seen in the history of 
Marie de Medicis. He fills the r61e of a little love, 
plays with armour, presents the portrait to the Queen 
and rides allegorical lions at the wedding. An ugly 
old woman, Rubens' servant, with hanging cheeks 
and crooked nose, figures in almost all of the holy 
families. She grows older as her master's list of 
paintings lengthens, and in Cyrus and Thomyris in 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 63 

the Louvre, she is a terrible old hag, bearded and 
toothless. Rubens knew how to choose the right 
actors for his dramas. Of a tall old man, red-faced, 
grey-bearded, he made a river god or a St. Ambrose; 
if his beard is a little whiter and his air more dig- 
nified, he is a prophet — unless, heavy and fat, he is 
used as a jovial drunkard. 

For his helmeted warriors, his hunters and his 
executioners, the painter had always models who 
were dark and hairy, with an air of energy and 
fierceness. During several years, at the period of 
the Silenus processions and the Magi, a superb negro 
posed often for him, and he loved to render the brown 
colouring, the leathery skin with black reflections, 
his deer's nostrils and great purple lips, parted with 
the speechless smile of a good-natured dog (Study 
of Negroes, Brussels). If Rubens saw a Spanish 
head, bony, with sunken cheeks and scanty beard 
and brilliant little eyes, there appeared in one of his 
groups an ascetic Franciscan. Of a man with moist 
lips and eyes and a lewd laugh he made a satyr; 
a stupid, dull face became a beadle. 

Rubens' faun was no more varied, nor more real 
than his humans. In all the hunts and allegorical, 
mythological or historical scenes there are not only 
peacocks and horses and dogs, but also tigers and 
lions and crocodiles, and all these animals have been 



64 RUBENS 

studied from nature. There are more or less au- 
thentic anecdotes about how Rubens profited by 
menageries that passed through Antwerp. In his 
own house he kept dogs, great solidly built Danes 
and little curled poodles whom he allowed to assist 
at the most solemn events of history (Crowning of 
Marie de Medicis, Erection of the Cross); in the garden 
lived the peacocks who always escorted his Junos, and 
in the stable two horses — always the same — carried 
his heroes (Daughters ofLeucippus, Lance Thrust), and 
even those of Van Dyck, two heavy beasts, one a 
bright bay and the other a dapper grey. In Rubens' 
work Pegasus himself was painted from nature. 

His imagination is realistic, and in his marvellous 
decorations there is nothing which is not a repro- 
duction of the things which surround his own life. 
The architecture is often only an Italian portico 
which he had in his garden (St. Ambrose and Theo- 
dosius, Flight of Lot). His apotheoses are in effects 
of real light, and the landscape which shows under 
the Olympian cloud as it rises is only the watery 
green and blue of a Flemish horizon. 

Rubens went back to the original tradition of the 
Netherland school to make fiction out of all that 
was most true and most picturesque in nature. His 
weakness only showed when he neglected this prin- 
ciple; in certain large works and a few small pic- 




THE RAPE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF LEUCIPPUS 

Old Pinakothek, Munich (1619-1620) 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 65 

tures he did not treat the Virgin with the same 
realism as his other figures; he neglected his model 
because he could not quite leave the conventional 
type. He made the skin whiter and the lips redder, 
but he also raised and rounded the eyelid in the 
Italian manner. The painting is characterless and 
banal, and the vivacity of the Child Jesus throws 
into even more relief the vague personality of his 
mother. He generally treated his gods and kings 
with more familiarity, making princesses out of 
superb peasants, for his imagination could trans- 
form simple humanity into the heroic and give dis- 
tinction to common life. 

With all his work Rubens could not fill all his 
orders, and following the custom of the great Italian 
masters of the Renaissance, he organised groups of 
apprentices to work under his direction. A Danish 
doctor, Otto Sperling, who was passing through 
Antwerp in 1621 and visited his atelier, says: "We 
saw also a great room without windows which re- 
ceived light only through an opening in the ceiling. 
In this room were gathered many young painters, 
each working at a different picture, for which M. 
Rubens had made a drawing in chalk and indicated 
the tones here and there with colour. These young 
men painted the picture, which later Rubens finished 
himself." 



66 RUBENS 

When Rubens sold his pictures he never pretended 
that the work was all by his own hand. When he 
offered Sir Dudley Carleton some paintings in ex- 
change for a collection of antiques, his estimate of 
their value was in proportion to the amount that he 
had done himself. The pupils had collaborated more 
or less; a Prometheus is "by his hand and the eagle 
by Snyders"; a "Daniel surrounded by many lions, 
studied from nature, is entirely his own work." In 
this way he separated his own painting from that 
of his pupils, reserving, as his memoirs show, the 
figures for himself and leaving the accessories and 
landscapes to a pupil "distinguished in that kind of 
work." Sometimes the painter is "his best pupil," 
but he retouches it entirely with his own hand. No 
picture left his studio until he had worked enough 
on it "for it to pass for an original." The value of 
his collaborators was far above that of ordinary 
pupils; names like Wildens, van Thulden, van Uden, 
van Egmont are worthy to be remembered and 
those of Van Dyck and Snyders are famous. 

Each had some special skill by which he showed 
himself worthy of the master. In painting still life, 
fruits or animals from nature, they had learnt ac- 
curacy of eye and superior skill of hand. Rubens 
furnished the composition, and his sketch indicated 
the general colour, leaving nothing to the initiative 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 67 

of his collaborators except within the limits of their 
own specialty. At the first glance this seems a sur- 
prising system, and it would be absurd to say that 
Rubens' works had always gained by it. It is less 
incomprehensible here than it would be in any other 
atelier. Rubens' pictures differed from each other 
only in rearrangements of the same elements. When 
a sketch had once been made, it developed almost 
by natural growth into a large composition in which 
each motif led to an accepted result. Rubens "is in 
the position of a workman who does the thing that 
he knows without searching in the infinite for per- 
fection. His sublime ideas are translated into forms 
which the superficial find monotonous. . . . This 
monotony is not displeasing to a man who has pene- 
trated into the secrets of art." 1 

The drawbacks of this sort of collaboration which 
is forced upon almost all great decorators are not 
without their compensations. Between the original 
conception, expressed by the sketch and the neces- 
sary last touches of the brush, is a long, weary pro- 
cess, purely material, and all the longer and less 
significant because it is apt to stifle the inspiration 
with physical fatigue. It is in this that the help of 
others is valuable. It saved Rubens from wasting 

1 Delacroix — Journal Jan. 27, 1852. 



68 RUBENS 

his vigour in rubbing in backgrounds, or vast archi- 
tectural settings. At the moment when he put on 
the canvas the last characteristic touches which give 
the soul of the artist to his work, his eyes had all 
their freshness of impression and his hand all its 
eagerness and skill. This is why his paintings are 
never heavy, never weary, and in spite of their 
size keep always the same facility and exquisite 
flavour of youth. 

Since his marriage and settlement in his house on 
the Wapper, there had been no events in Rubens' 
life until 1626, when Isabella Brandt died. His 
biography is simply a list of his pictures. 

They were always astonishing in their number and 
variety. How did Rubens manage to produce so 
much without showing fatigue or even effort? In 
saving his strength. He was a rich and frugal 
steward. When a certain subject was ordered he 
did not trouble to invent the composition, but 
frankly borrowed motifs and personages from the 
Flemish and Italian schools, (Descents from the Cross, 
Last Judgments, Assumptions, Magi, Madonnas). 
Then he never dropped an idea till he thought it 
had given him all the use it could. The same motif 
would haunt his imagination for a long time, and 
appear in the pictures of a period, many of which 



HIS METHODS OF WORK 69 

seem to be studies for a work which will be the final 
expression. A series of pictures seems to be born 
from a common source until suddenly, completely 
master of his idea, he creates in a day of inspiration 
the Magi of Antwerp, or the Way of the Cross of 
Brussels. By a natural growth the theme has be- 
come richer and clearer and more sure, and some 
day the masterpiece drops from it, spontaneously, 
like a beautiful ripe fruit. 

In this way Rubens' works often group themselves 
by their subject and by their date, (the Descents from 
the Cross, Assumptions, Adorations of the Magi), and 
it is possible in studying to follow a methodical order 
without interfering with the chronology. 



CHAPTER III 

CRUCIFIXIONS 

In i6ii Rubens was commissioned to decorate the 
Altar of the Guild of Arquebusiers in the Cathedral 
of Antwerp. The patron of this Brotherhood was 
St. Christopher, and instead of following the sim- 
ple legend, Rubens chose to enlarge his subject by 
etymological analogies. As the Greek name of 
Christopher signified Carrier of Christ, he used for 
his subjects the people who had carried the body 
of Jesus. As in the Elevation of the Cross, he had 
five pictures to paint ; a central panel and the two 
faces of each wing. He put the Descent from the 
Cross in the centre, the Visitation on the left and 
the Presentation at the Temple on the right. When 
closed the triptych showed on one side a gigantic 
figure of St. Christopher carrying the Christ Child 
and on the other a Hermit lighting the Saint's way 
with a lantern. This plan was approved and the 
agreement signed on September 7, 161 1, and Rubens 
began the work at once. From time to time the 



CRUCIFIXIONS 71 

heads of the Brotherhood came to his studio and 
watched the painting to be sure that the material 
used was good and the panels "free from sap." 

In one year (September 12, 161 2) the central 
picture of the Descent from the Cross was finished 
and placed in the Cathedral; two years later the 
two wings were joined to it, and the whole was con- 
secrated with great ceremony July 22, 16 14. Ac- 
cording to the contract Rubens received 2,800 
florins and a pair of gloves was presented to Isa- 
bella Brandt. The triptych is still in the Cathedral 
for which it was painted. 

The subject which Rubens chose for the central 
picture had been treated many times, for the Flemish 
Primitives loved that most pathetic of the scenes of 
the Passion, and the Italian painters had found in 
it an opportunity for heroic and beautiful poses. 

Rubens, who at this moment was quite as much 
Italian as Fleming, saw what such a subject offered 
in both plastic and moral effects, and tried to make 
each one serve the other. Before his time, in 
Florence as in Bruges and Cologne, all painters had 
divided the composition into two distinct parts. On 
the one side the body is being carefully detached 
from the Cross and the Virgin sinks fainting, sur- 
rounded by St. John and the holy women who 
minister to her. 



72 RUBENS 

Here the two actions are brought together. Here 
the same eyes watch the majestic descent of the 
Crucified Christ, and weep for the lost son and 
master; the same hands check the fall of the dead 
body and comfort the beloved Sufferer. Slowly the 
corpse slips down the white slope of the shroud. 
A strange tragic light models the gracefully placed 
body, the face worn by pain and the closed eyelids; 
the same light which, falling on two beautiful 
women's faces, reveals the anguish of the Virgin 
and the passionate grief of the Magdalen. In the 
Elevation of the Cross the exaggerated muscular ac- 
tion around a motionless crucified figure emphasised 
the ferocity of the executioners and the resignation 
of the Martyr. Even more touching is the lassitude 
of the superb body, indifferent alike to the reverent 
solicitude of the disciples and the mute appeal of 
their love. 

The painting is thoroughly Fleming in that it 
expresses the action and suffering of people of our 
own race. It transposes miraculous and sacred 
events into a drama of human tenderness. But this 
humanity is greater than ours, the figures are more 
beautiful and the emotions more noble. Human 
sorrow shows frankly in the troubled faces and 
streaming eyes, but the passionate gestures are full 
of rhythm, and all the anguish is harmonised in 



CRUCIFIXIONS 73 

the sadness of one majestic tragedy. The relation- 
ship to Roger van der Weyden and Quentin Matsys 
would be even more evident if an entirely foreign 
training had not come between the heir and his 
ancestors. 

The Primitives placed their figures in the positions 
which seemed to them most expressive without any 
other thought of grouping. The perfection of the 
execution is the naive homage of their piety. Rubens 
had brought from the foreign schools new methods 
of expression. He knew how to paint in a large 
manner, and to handle easily the difficulties of such 
art. He understood how to generalise line and colour 
and how to bring a large composition together by 
giving it unity and balance. Notice how ingeni- 
ously he stages his figures at different heights, and 
how naturally he surrounds the body in the centre 
without cloaking any figure or twisting any atti- 
tude. More than all he understood dividing his 
light. He knew how a painter can save the high 
light for important episodes, how he can leave the 
greater part of the canvas in half tones, and when 
necessary lift and accent the whole composition by 
vigorous shadows. In this picture he has perhaps 
abused that last means, following the example of 
Caravaggio. 

His Italian habits have not yet disappeared. 



74 RUBENS 

Everything grows lighter in his other paintings of 
the same subject, the dark green of the Magdalen's 
dress becomes a beautiful luminous yellow, St. 
John's red robe glows more brightly, there are more 
gleams in the shadows, more luminousness, more 
life. The colours are less flat and smooth, the con- 
tours less sharp and the brush freer. 

This picture had great success, and in later years 
Rubens was often commissioned to paint the same 
subject again, but none of these later pictures 
exactly reproduced the one at Antwerp. The atti- 
tudes vary, though the people are the same types 
and express the same emotions. The Descent from 
the Cross in the Musee of Lille, which is hardly less 
beautiful than that in Antwerp, emphasises the 
emotional quality of the first work. The body of 
Christ is slipping and the hands of his Mother hold 
him up. The right arm hangs like a dead thing 
and with a gesture of enveloping love, the Mag- 
dalen lifts it to press a last kiss. Nothing could 
be more touching than her face, radiant with youth, 
bending to caress softly, between her sobs, that thin, 
pallid hand. This splendid young creature is a 
favourite creation of Rubens. He never fails to cast 
her at the foot of the cross, despairing and superb, 
with disordered gold hair, more lovely and touching 
because of her grief. 



CRUCIFIXIONS 75 

The motive of the dead body also interested him 
greatly. His Christs are innumerable, those that 
are sketched upright on the cross against an inky 
sky, and those that are laid out relaxed on the 
stones of the tomb. 

It is necessary to look at his Christ on the Straw 
(Musee of Antwerp) to realise with what pleasure his 
brush painted that beautiful greenish body, touched 
with blood spots, the torso all luminous, but modelled 
at the same time into imperceptible reflections of 
violet, blue, rose and green, defining with precision 
all its form and articulation. The head hangs heavy 
and twisted, and in the hair and beard, rubbed in 
simply with bitumen, clots of blood give a sombre 
vermilion light. 

Rubens' exuberant fancy shows itself more and 
more, and the gravity, which in the Antwerp altar- 
piece controlled the ardour of his imagination, 
melts before it. Now when he paints a corpse, even 
that of Jesus Christ, his mind is less composed and 
his eye is more amused by the brilliant effect of 
colour. On the cool grey of the linen, the dead 
flesh shows a play of limpid, almost joyous colour. 

Another important work of this time, the Coup 
de Lance, in which the brutality of the Elevation of 
the Cross is combined with the tender feeling of the 
Descent, shows this increasing vehemence. Regu- 



76 RUBENS 

larity of composition has been abandoned, the atti- 
tudes are less staid and logical, and it is evident 
that when his brush began to cover the vast canvas 
all the episodes of the composition had not been 
thought out. Spectators and outsiders who had 
interested the master for a moment are added. In 
especial the light is used less sparingly. Formerly 
Rubens had followed Caravaggio in leaving much 
shadow around the edges of the picture, so that 
a little light in the centre would give the eye a pleas- 
ure that was harmonious, if rather meagre. Now the 
gloom is penetrated by the light of day and cut by 
sharp gleams, and the sky is no longer uniformly 
obscure. In the shadows on the right shine tor- 
tured bodies and sorrowful faces; against the light 
on the left the dark silhouettes of horsemen with 
fierce, hairy faces rise; in the centre a Magdalen, 
warm and golden. At every point silk glistens, and 
steel gleams, and light bursts out uncontrolled, su- 
perb and tragic like the groans and sobs around the 
pale, majestic figure of the Christ. 

More light and therefore more colour, more lib- 
erty and therefore more ease in the handling. 
Rubens' art growing each day more supple and richer 
loses the method learnt at Rome and at Bologna 
and brings more truth and life to the service of his 
glorious visions. 




LE COUP DE LANCE 

Antwerp Museum (1620) 



CHAPTER IV 

MYTHOLOGICAL PICTURES 

Fromentin says that Olympus bored Rubens. 
The great number of pictures with mythological sub- 
jects which were not demanded of him prove the 
contrary. These charming paintings, generally on 
smaller panels than his altar-pieces, seem to be 
works of pure pleasure in which Rubens amused 
himself and wholly delighted all amateurs. He even 
introduced pagan gods into places where they were 
not needed. His figures which are not mythologi- 
cal, as that of Christ, often owe part of their ma- 
jestic robustness to the Jupiter of Greek and Roman 
sculpture, and it is easy to recognise in certain St. 
Sebastiens the grace of the fauns and Apollos of 
Praxiteles leaning carelessly against the trunk of a 
tree. By constant intellectual cultivation Rubens 
kept in touch with the philosophers and poets of 
antiquity, and the sight of a relic of the past gave 
him all the pleasure of a devout archaeologist. It 
would be strange if he had not felt the classic charm 



78 RUBENS 

of the ancient religions or had not repeated some of 
the motives that he found in Rome, either from copies 
which he had made or from originals in his own col- 
lection, and a careful analysis will show in his work 
many distinct suggestions of classic sculpture. 

For all the secondary divinities, river nymphs, 
satyrs, scattered through his large compositions, as 
well as for his higher gods, Jupiter or Apollo, who 
hold principal roles, he followed the type of the 
antique statues of bas-reliefs. He repeated the 
leonine head with low, flat forehead, the firmly drawn 
mouth and vigorous modelling of the classic Jupiter, 
making his hair brown, his beard bushy, the mantle 
across his knees a solid red; and using his torso as 
an opportunity to paint powerful pectoral muscles. 
His hairy, dripping Neptunes are treated in the same 
way, and the Apollo of the Government of the Queen 
in the Medici gallery is almost an exact copy of the 
Apollo Belvedere. He has the same pose with the 
chest thrown forward and the head turned towards 
the arm which holds the bow, only the legs are 
slightly changed to give more spring to the body. 
A picture of the Death of Seneca reproduces exactly 
a statue now in the Pinakothek at Munich. 

But in spite of these frank copies it is certain 
that classic art had very little real influence on 
Rubens. One hesitates to recognise the antique 



MYTHOLOGICAL PICTURES 79 

marble as the inspiration of his vigorous, living 
figures, because in utilising these models he has not 
sacrificed any peculiar demands of his own technique. 
Out of these gods of marble and bronze he has made 
beings of flesh and blood ; he has taken the hard and 
polished coldness from the statue, and by trans- 
parent shadows and soft curves and graceful round- 
ness of modelling he has expressed the moist and 
living surface of the human body, and by this change 
alone made the copy almost unrecognisable. 

Because of this realism and intensity of physical life 
Rubens' gods have often been found shocking, but 
the cause was not any lack of capacity in the artist 
to appreciate the purity of the Greek and Roman 
forms. No one could have more easily reproduced 
the elegant outlines of an Antinous, or a study in 
grisaille of the face of Niobe; but that was a dan- 
ger to be avoided. 

Here is a quotation made by de Piles from a criti- 
cal essay in Latin written by Rubens — and now lost: 
"There are some painters for whom this copying of 
statues is extremely useful, but for others it is dan- 
gerous to the point of stupefying their art. In my 
opinion to reach perfection it is necessary not only 
to know antique sculpture, but to have understood, 
as it were, its intimate meaning. But this knowl- 
edge must be used with judgment, distracting the 



80 RUBENS 

mind entirely from the statue itself, because many 
unskillful artists and even some with talent can 
not distinguish form from substance, nor understand 
the medium of the sculptor." 

Thus it was not only by instinct but by reason 
and will that Rubens turned directly to nature for 
his supernatural beings, and that he rejected the 
dreary method so long used by the French school 
of subordinating colour and limiting the paint to a 
feeble repetition of what the sculptor had already 
said in stone. He not only transformed the an- 
tique to meet the demands of his technique, but ad- 
justed it to his own personal taste. 

With him, the gods, already cosmopolitan, sub- 
mitted to a final transformation and were natur- 
alised Flemings. There is no real anachronism in 
this. It is not ridiculous to bring back again into 
natural life all those beautiful creatures of legend, 
who symbolise the birth of the forces of nature. 

Mythology, which had grown old and decrepit in 
the French and Italian art of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, was dipped again in its natural source, to find 
there a new youth. Undoubtedly the gods lost some 
of their poetry of line, nobleness of pose and serenity 
of soul; like other creatures of Rubens they have 
more life than distinction, but the painter still 
knew how to differentiate the beautiful proportions 




£. 00 



MYTHOLOGICAL PICTURES 8 1 

of a Greek god and the rather dense materialism of 
a Fleming. In that same study which de Piles 
knew, he explains the relation between life and an- 
tique art: "By the violent exercise of the palestra 
and the gymnasium men were pushed not only to 
sweat, but to extreme fatigue. Thanks to such 
training, grace and freedom and harmony of move- 
ment were secured." Flemish beauty, on the con- 
trary, is that of a body which is indolent and over- 
nourished. Is it possible to correct one by the 
other? 

To judge of this, examine successively the two 
Triumphs of Truth in the Louvre by painters of the 
opposing schools, and compare the pale cold statue 
of Poussin with the robust gallant of Rubens. If 
the latter seems to treat the august divinity rather 
familiarly, is not the other more or less paralysed by 
superstitious devotion? 

This is undoubtedly why Rubens spent less time 
on the serene heights of Olympus than in the ter- 
restrial valleys and sacred woods where nymphs 
and satyrs rioted joyously, and all the gods who 
came down mingled in the life of mortals, a prey to 
the weakness and passions of humanity. 

His brush lingered tenderly on the body of a beau- 
tiful goddess conquered by love. He liked to con- 
trast a milk-white skin with the brown, muscular 



82 RUBENS 

limbs of a man. He related without dullness the 
gallantries of the gods. 

Et depuis le chaos les amours immortelles! 

Jupiter embracing the surprised Callisto, Ixion 
duped by Juno's ruse, Meleager presenting the boar's 
head to Atalanta, Perseus rescuing a frightened 
Andromeda, or Venus pleading with Adonis as he 
departs for the chase. The daughters of Leucippus 
show the graceful, vigorous lines of their bodies as 
they struggle in the brutal grasp of the Dioscures, 
and in luxuriant thickets huntresses sleep from 
weariness, or fly madly from the pursuit of some 
lewd and jeering satyr. Such are the scenes to 
which Rubens lent his warm and virile tempera- 
ment. 

But his art really reached the feeling which gives 
new life to a myth in the Silenus Series (St. Peters- 
burg, Berlin, London), particularly in the Progress 
of Silenus of the Munich Pinakothek. In this pic- 
ture Rubens has pushed freedom to licence ; there is 
not a touch of the brush, an unctuous curve, a light 
on a wet lip, that has not given the painter pleas- 
ure. In the centre an old Silenus, fat, slimy, hairy, 
with leering eye and brutal face, advances heavily, 
pushed by an escort of fauns, nymphs and old 
women, who steer his staggering course; and to 
help support his drunken body a negro pushes with 



MYTHOLOGICAL PICTURES 83 

his hard hand into the heavy fat. In front a shape- 
less female faun sinks her soft body over two little 
fauns, already horned and hoofed, who hang, 
gorged with milk, at her breasts. Here the vehe- 
mence of Rubens' talent has displayed itself freely, 
animating this vulgarity with all its lyric power. 
The poetic tradition and the genius of the painter 
were at one in unbridling the exuberant joyousness 
of this bestial incarnation of Silenus as a Flemish 
god. 

Mythology delighted Rubens by the splendours of 
its nudeness, and his pleasure was complete when 
he could put the bodies into violent motion, as in 
the Battle of the Amazons (Munich). A disorderly 
flight over a bridge with horses that gallop and rear 
and bite, women who resist desperately and sink 
wounded or dead, two or three simple episodes 
around which are entangled bodies that struggle 
and flee and fall — this is a little composition where 
Rubens has remembered da Vinci, Raphael and 
Titian, but which he has lived and made his own 
for the display of beauty and physical force which it 
required. 

It is to this desire to throw human bodies into 
violent positions that must be attributed the many 
Hunting Scenes which came from Rubens' atelier. 
This subject lends itself to a free play of brutality 



84 RUBENS 

and the imagination of the painter could pile up in 
them his "inventions of genius" (Delacroix). Lion, 
Tiger, Hippopotamus Hunts (Munich, Dresden, Augs- 
burg), great tawny roaring beasts, frightened horses, 
hunters shouting and striking, all the contortions 
of rage and fear and suffering savagely intermingled. 
Sometimes he hurled a pack of hounds with hunters 
against a boar and put across in front of them an 
obstacle of some sort, like the branching trunk of 
a dead tree, to break the monotony of a parallel 
composition, or varied the accidents of the chase by 
obstacles to be climbed, falls and leaps increasing 
the fierceness of the pursuit and struggle; or again 
in a landscape of large trees he set an attack on a 
boar at bay with dogs that tear, peasants that prod 
with spears, and horsemen rushing at full speed, 
while a vagabond blows on a horn with all the 
enthusiasm of a joyous Triton (Boar Hunt, Dresden). 

For the same reason Rubens often borrowed 
Michelangelo's composition of the last judgment 
(The Fall of the Damned, The Small Last Judgment, 
Munich). He had brought from Rome the memory 
of that tragic fresco of the Sistine Chapel and modi- 
fied it to give the unity of one great movement to 
that scattering of unchained forces. 

The archangels in a flight like a vertical thunder- 
bolt are precipitated from above onto the damned, 




THE SMALLER LAST JUDGMENT 
Old Pinakothek, Munich (about 1615) 



MYTHOLOGICAL PICTURES S$ 

and scourge them furiously. From below the demons 
bound, clutch, breaking off clusters of humans, who 
roll down into the gulf. In the centre a cataract of 
nude figures sweeps across the canvas like a quick 
vision, leaving unforgettable glimpses of strange at- 
titudes of fear and vertigo. Vile monsters seize the 
bodies of beautiful sinners; white young flesh writhes 
under the torture. The temperament of the painter 
has given a new meaning to this scene. It is a 
drama of strength and energy, a furious revolt of 
life against the horror of death. 



CHAPTER V 

SAINTS AND ASSUMPTIONS 

Remembering the religious painting of the Primi- 
tive Flemings and Italians, it is difficult to find in 
the huge canvases of Rubens that feeling of naive 
faith which had made in the past of skillful painting 
an act of piety. The old illuminator, when he is 
touching the face of the Blessed Virgin or the Lord 
Jesus, is humble and worshipping, and, if he is 
too well trained to let his brush tremble, at least 
there is in his work a touching gravity and some- 
thing like the ardour of a fervent prayer. 

In Rubens I find always the same skill and the 
same alert confidence, as of an artist entirely at 
ease with his subject. Religion interested him only 
when it touched humanity; and his realism is the 
antipodes of the spiritual. Only when he paints the 
Passion of Christ, the miracles and the martyrs 
does he reach a beauty that is moving. The stories 
of the evangelists and the lives of the saints he 
has constructed from scenes of common life. It is 



SAINTS AND ASSUMPTIONS 87 

111 the streets that he finds his apostles without a 
halo, and even in the dead body of Christ he puts 
nothing that promises the miracle of the resurrec- 
tion. 

Is this the effect of indifference or lack of religious 
feeling? His private life was certainly not that of 
an infidel, but he lived in an astounding century, 
when the minds of men were devout, but their art 
was not Christian. Take the tragedies of Corneille, 
for instance, with religious subjects and not a line 
or a sentence that could not fit equally well into a 
purely pagan drama. Fervent Catholics, severe and 
punctilious in their religious duties, these men never 
mixed their religion with their imagination or with 
any of the feelings which arouse emotion and make 
the life of art. Their faith is solid and defined, 
incompatible not only with the doubts of mystery 
and the fictions of poetry, but also with all mysteri- 
ous emotions. In a life such as Rubens', full of 
steady work and intense production, no break in 
the equilibrium of thought and action was possible, 
certainly none to the advantage of the former. The 
habit of his art and the nature of his religion com- 
bined to make him represent all sacred subjects 
under their historical or human aspects. 

From 1 6 10 to 1625 religious pictures held the 
most important plan in his work. These were 



88 RUBENS 

large, decorative canvases, imposing in style and 
treatment, as suited the taste and faith of the mo- 
ment. Destined always for the same use, they were 
composed in much the same manner: very large 
picture, placed high, requiring simple masses, 
distinct and easily understood from a distance. 
Rubens set his personages in architectural frames, 
making it possible to place one group above an- 
other and to fill the canvas without empty spaces 
or confusion. St. Francis Xavier, St. Ignatius 
(Vienna), St. Bavon (Ghent) and St. Rock (Alost) 
revive the dead, give alms, and heal the plague- 
stricken, and in all these pictures the same system 
places the saint well in view. The suppliants are 
grouped at the foot of the composition and wait 
with groans and lifted arms in hope of the miracle. 
The saint dominates the picture in a dramatic pose, 
either on the steps of the altar, on a throne or on 
the top of a staircase; in spite of differences in 
setting and costumes from armoured royalists and 
mitred bishops with chatelaines in green to a sim- 
ple pilgrim in a sombre prison, as in the picture at 
Vienna, the same plan is always recognisable — a 
wise and solid composition, excellent and rather 
cold painting. 

Sometimes these sacred personages seemed to 
have interested him a little more, as in the St. 



SAINTS AND ASSUMPTIONS 89 

Ambrose and Theodosius (Vienna), the Communion 
of St. Francis (Antwerp), and still more in the 
Calling of St. Peter or The Miraculous Draught of 
Fishes (Malines). The Miraculous Draught gave 
Rubens a chance to paint a fishing scene rather 
than a miracle, and the beauty of the picture is 
entirely in its realism. He did not consider the 
religious significance of the scene at all, but simply 
treated it as a real action and made of it a bit of 
life, vigorous, violent and harsh. Some fisher- 
men, with great effort, drag in a net filled to break- 
ing with fish. One of them in a rough, red smock, 
his high boots deep in the water, leans back with 
one leg thrust forward and pulls the heavy net with 
all the force of his outstretched arms and stiffened 
body. Another helps him, bent over the edge of 
the boat, his round face wrinkled by the effort and 
a laugh of pleasure at the unexpected catch. A third 
pushing on a boat hook stands out against an ink- 
black wave in a pose of life. Peter, humble and 
eclipsed, is devoutly thanking an insignificant Jesus. 
Nothing is lacking to the scene except the presence 
of the divine and spiritual. The fishermen of Ma- 
lines, who had ordered the picture, must have been 
delighted to recognise the fine fish, slimy and flap- 
ping, and to see themselves drawn to life, the same 
and yet glorified. 



go RUBENS 

The Last Communion of St. Francis, on the con- 
trary, is restrained and grave. Here the colour 
scheme is narrowed and all gay contrasts sup- 
pressed. For once Rubens was moved by his sub- 
ject. The coarse woollen cloth of the Franciscan 
replaced the gay stuffs of fete days, and the picture 
is like a cameo of grey and brown tints, lighted only 
by sorrowing faces and the dying body of the saint. 
But in spite of this restricted use of colour, there 
are no opaque shadows in the Caravaggio manner; 
the painting is rich in delicate tones and fine trans- 
parency, beautiful at once in austerity and tender- 
ness. 

The St. Ambrose Forbidding Theodosius to enter the 
Temple ranks also as one of Rubens' best works by 
its simple grandeur. The tall greybeard, resplend- 
ent in his mitre and robes, firmly but gently repels 
the fawning trooper Emperor, who bends before him 
with a false smile. Out of the group of calm, in- 
terested clerks, the brutal soldiers, grumbling at the 
audacity of the bishop, and a few expressive figures 
simply opposed, Rubens has made a vivid drama 
and built up a beautiful decoration. 

Among these church pictures there is one sub- 
ject, very often repeated, which seems to have 
peculiarly fitted the genius of the painter, as it did 
the religious taste of the time, the Assumption of the 




SAINT AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS 
Imperial Museum, Vienna (about 1618) 



SAINTS AND ASSUMPTIONS 91 

Virgin. Brussels, Dresden, Vienna, Antwerp, all 
have variations of this theme. Rubens borrowed 
from Titian the composition of his famous picture, 
but altered it slightly by suppressing the figure of 
God the Father, which in the Venetian picture re- 
ceives the Virgin, and so giving the composition two 
instead of three stages. It is in consequence less 
scattered, and the approach of heavenly bliss is 
expressed only by an increasing glow and light. As 
always with Rubens, there is more motion or move- 
ment than in the model, and less formality. The 
subject has great advantages decoratively, as it 
permits a very high canvas filled by two groups of 
figures in simple attitudes with evident significance ; 
below are the animated figures and violent gestures 
of those left behind, and above is the radiant flight 
into heaven. 

But best of all, the Assumption gave Rubens a 
chance to paint children in the garland of angels 
which surrounds the Virgin's progress. He loved 
to ornament his compositions with dimpled little 
bodies, and his rapid manner of painting rendered 
perfectly their artless, unskilled sprightliness and 
the pretty movements of their plump little limbs, 
and his delicate, clear colour expressed easily the 
soft freshness of young flesh modelled by light 
shadows. He loved to toss a naked baby into a 



92 RUBENS 

ray of light. His amours and chubby angels tumble 
about like little animals, abandoned to the joy of 
frolicking. 

This same gaiety animates the beautiful Assump- 
tion of the high altar of the Cathedral of Notre 
Dame at Antwerp. Titian's composition is greatly 
changed. The groups are less compact, and though 
at the base of the picture the apostles form a solid 
enough mass, bending the fine lines of their mantles 
over the empty tomb, even they are not quite close ; 
the light penetrates the crowd to the ground, il- 
luminating not only the apostles' woollen cloaks, 
but also the shining robes of some graceful female 
saints. Between the two sombre and tragic pic- 
tures of the Elevation and the Descent from the Cross] 
the Assumption has smiling radiance. It is all light 
and transparent, resplendent freshness. There is in 
it that great note of joy which Rubens' art naturally 
expressed when he had no object but his own satis- 
faction. A lovely lady in delicate, diaphanous 
robes, her hair unbound and her face full of ecstasy, 
raised by a fluttering swarm of angels, an iridescent, 
joyous vision mounting to heaven like the song of 
a lark. 



CHAPTER VI 

ADORATIONS OF THE MAGI 

One subject was sure to tempt Rubens, The Adora- 
tion of the Magi. For a long time the popular 
imagination had enriched this scene with strange 
magnificence. It was to most an evocation of all 
the splendours of the Orient, and a naive tradition 
had bestowed princely and ecclesiastical pomp and 
luxury upon the three good kings, Gaspar, Melchior 
and Balthazar. A very simple scene in a setting of 
rich stuffs and gleaming gold and jewels. . No spec- 
tacle could have been more marvellous or better 
adapted to painting. 

Rubens treated it often, just after his return from 
Italy, for the Hotel de Ville at Antwerp (now at 
Madrid), the Capucines of Tournai (this picture is 
now at Brussels), for the Church of St. John at Ma- 
lines (still in that church), for the Abbey of St. 
Michael at Antwerp (now in the Museum) and for 
the Church of the Annunciation at Brussels (now in 
the Louvre). He also painted the shepherds rever- 



94 RUBENS 

ently laying their modest offering at the feet of the 
Holy Child, but his preference was for the gorgeous 
Magi, superb as conquerors, bedecked like arch- 
bishops. At first he overloaded the scene giving too 
prominent a role to a pair of athletic porters, a 
reminiscence of Italy, who had no effect in the 
setting of richness and splendour. Later he left out 
these unnecessary and unimposing figures or rele- 
gated them to the second plan where they were 
packed in a crowd at the back, and sketched their 
eager, curious faces as badly placed spectators 
who want to see more. In the front the great Magi, 
white, yellow and red, forming a distinct group, 
gather respectfully before the Virgin, received by 
the little shining Child, and the miraculous light 
illumines their good, bearded, bowed faces, which 
are moved with emotion. 

The wavering light of torches throws sudden 
lights and shadows over the crowd behind, making 
eyes shine out and armour gleam, showing a superb 
turban, a negro's laugh, or a beautiful page, which 
gives to this strange setting, where ornate columns 
mingle with worm-eaten beams, a magical gaiety, the 
naive luxury of a humble Christmas celebration. 

But the theme was not exhausted in Rubens' 
imagination, and one happy day the Magi came 
again to life on his canvas, more gorgeous than ever. 




THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 

Antwerp Museum (1624) 



ADORATIONS OF THE MAGI 95 

Tradition says that he took only thirteen days to 
paint, entirely with his own hand, the great master- 
piece at Antwerp. No more shadows, the whole 
picture is in clear day, brilliant light penetrates every 
corner of the canvas, revealing enchanting details, 
showing the skill and vigour of faultless painting. 
Never was a mind more inspired or a hand more 
sure, and this studied work seems to have been 
executed as rapidly as it was conceived. The 
painter worked with the same dash as if he were 
sketching a simple study, and covered the immense 
canvas from corner to corner with the same pleas- 
ure, without weakness or fatigue or heaviness, never 
without ideas — and rare ones — and never losing in 
the mass of details the main object at which he was 
aiming. The immense setting has the same ease 
and magnificence throughout. The brocades and 
laces, precious stones and carved vases, the steel 
of casques, the transparent robes where soft white 
melts into purple shadows, the exquisite modulation 
of a violet velvet on the gold of a dalmatic, all in 
light, pure touches, which strike and impress you, 
play, melt, and separate themselves in a gay clear- 
ness of atmosphere, treasures of which a fraction 
would make the fortune of any other painter. All 
this is shown, not spread out for show, but ex- 
pressed in direct terms, seen by an eye which is 



96 RUBENS 

not blinded by its own wealth, rendered with 
rapidity of precision by a careful hand, eager to 
reach the more important parts of the work. No 
canvas can make us feel more clearly the enthusiasm 
which vibrated in Rubens' soul and the confident 
skill which carried his brush when he was in the 
mood and his model was beautiful. 

When he had this sereneness and confidence his 
painting becomes lyric, and he seems to be aroused 
by the vigour of his own imagination. As the sub- 
ject fitted that treatment Rubens had no fear of hand- 
ling the good Magi with too much familiarity. They 
are placid Flemings playing an epic masquerade, and 
underneath the warlike disguises the honest figures 
show with hot faces and thick hair. At Brussels 
and Malines, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar were 
reverent, attentive, moved ; here they are posing for 
the spectator, amused by their r61es and pleased 
with their gorgeous accoutrements. Except for the 
European kneeling in stupid ecstasy whose eyes 
smile tenderly at the newborn Child, they are sim- 
ply preening themselves, and their poses would be 
inexplicable if they did not so entirely command 
our admiration. The African, belted into his splen- 
did green robe, hand on thigh, stands planted solidly 
on his spread legs, with his suspicious look and eyes 
rolled white in his turbaned face. The Asiatic is 



ADORATIONS OF THE MAGI 97 

fierce in his great red mantle, and holds out the 
golden cup with a heroic, furious air. Joseph, retir- 
ing and timid, is naturally shy before such extraor- 
dinary visitors, while the mother feels only a peace- 
ful satisfaction in showing her newborn son. The 
Child is, as always, full of gracious charm. A 
Brussels his attention is attracted by the nice bald 
head of one of the Magi, and he puts his hand naturally 
out onto the shining thing. The old man is moved 
to tears, and the good negro laughs with all his 
teeth. At Malines the Child hugs the gold pieces 
that have been given him without paying further 
attention to the people present. At Antwerp the 
baby, like us, is enchanted by the wonderful spec- 
tacle. He throws himself back, laughs and ap- 
plauds with all the power of his little arms. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MEDICI GALLERY 

A greater undertaking, however, was yet needed 
to show the full measure of Rubens' genius. His 
imagination was productive and powerful enough 
to give life to a universe. Already on March 29, 
1620, he had agreed to paint thirty-nine pictures in 
sizes from 2 metres 10 to 2 metres 80 for the large 
church which the Jesuits had just built in Antwerp. 
The conditions of this contract, in which he had 
promised to deliver the pictures before the end of 
the year, made it necessary for him to supervise the 
work rather than execute it himself. "He was 
pledged to make the small drawings with his own 
hand and to have the large pictures painted by Van 
Dyck and certain others of his pupils," and prom- 
ised on his honour "to finish himself anything that 
he found incomplete." Almost all of these pictures 
were destroyed by fire in 1718. 1 

1 Two have been preserved, The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier and of 
St. Ignatius. 




Q 



THE MEDICI GALLERY 99 

Another series quite as important and executed 
with more personality and less haste is fortunately 
preserved in the History of the Life of Marie de 
Medicis, now in the Museum of the Louvre. 

Marie de Medicis, queen mother of Florence, was 
now reconciled to her son Louis XIII, and being 
established again in her lovely Palace of the Luxem- 
bourg, had decided to complete its decoration. 
There were still two long galleries to be painted. 
What artist could best accomplish such a work? 
The Fontainebleau school vegetated, mediocre and 
unproductive. Vouet was in Italy; Poussin, still 
unknown, was about to follow him. By good for- 
tune the order escaped the hands of the Romans 
and Bolognese, skillful and dull masters of a worn- 
out art. The fame of the great painter of Antwerp, 
and also the patronage of the Archduchess Isabella, 
who was a friend of Marie de Medicis, caused the 
choice to fall on Rubens, who hastened to Paris to 
find out the Queen's wishes and to see the galleries. 
In one gallery twenty-two canvases at least six 
metres long and three wide were to glorify the life 
of Marie de Medicis from her birth to her recent 
reconciliation with her son, the king. Besides this 
the painter had to illustrate in the second gallery 
the life of Henri IV. This was not a task to dismay 
Rubens. "No undertaking, however great in size 



100 RUBENS 

and diversity of subject, has ever crushed my 
courage." 1 

The episodes to be treated were agreed upon. 
Rubens returned to Antwerp and started at once to 
transpose in epic style the adventures of the Queen 
of France. 

His sketches were soon made, slight, clear paint- 
ings, already full of inspiration and a direct ex- 
pression of Rubens' thought. The scheme was satis- 
factory, with a few modifications, and work in the 
atelier commenced. The master composed the pic- 
tures, painted the principal figures, and harmonised 
the work of his pupils. His brush, generous, rapid, 
and a little soft, is easily recognisable among the 
more painstaking landscapes and accessories, such 
as the animals of Snyders, painted with more 
scrupulous detail. His flesh tints and his faces, with 
alert eyes, seem even more luminous and fresh in 
the silver-grey atmosphere so dear to van Thulden. 

In May, 1623, several canvases were finished and 
Rubens took them to Paris to satisfy the impatient 
curiosity of the Queen. They were found "most 
successful," and the painter was urged, early in 
1625, to complete the series at any cost. Rubens 
hurried back, finished the Coronation of the Queen 

1 Rubens to William Trumbull, September 13, 1621. 



THE MEDICI GALLERY IOI 

on the spot, and composed the Prosperity of the 
Regency. The 8th of May, 1625, was to be a great 
occasion at the Court, the marriage of Henrietta 
Maria, sister of Louis XIII, to Charles I of England, 
and it was for this ceremony that the Queen wanted 
her gallery finished. The pictures were in their 
places, brilliant with life and beauty. 

How did Rubens plan this work, and how did he 
execute it? 

For the first time he had to represent contem- 
porary history. Until now he had created only 
mythological scenes, or events far enough in the 
past to allow to the imagination the full liberty of 
fiction. This time his subject was both historical 
and contemporary. Must Rubens now give up his 
poetry, throw away his personality and sacrifice his 
imagination for the sake of accuracy? Is an artist 
able to give up his temperament? Face to face with 
his subject, Rubens never asked for a moment how 
he should tell history, but how he could transpose 
it. This was the more necessary as the facts offered 
only poor and unimposing material. 

Marie de Medicis, a fat Italian, past her prime, 
"la grosse banquiere," had behind her a life in 
which nothing had happened that was worthy of 
admiration, or even of pity. Born in a family of 
bankers, married for her fortune by a king in need 



I0 2 RUBENS 

of money, she had passed her life in quarrelling with 
a husband who did not love her, and in war with a 
son who hated her, and in a regency without glory 
for herself or profit for the country — a disturbed but 
empty life, a series of turbulent passions without 
dignity. When Rubens had eliminated all that 
could not be told, nothing remained but two births 
(the Queen's and that of Louis XIII), two marriages 
(that of the Queen and of Anne of Austria), three 
transfers of power (Henri to Marie, France to the 
Regent and the Regent to Louis XIII). It was 
necessary to paint the reconciliation of the mother 
and son three times; to repeat three times the happi- 
ness of the Regency, and to sketch the Queen's 
marriage with four scenes (the portrait, the mar- 
riage at Florence by proxy, the Landing at Mar- 
seilles, and the marriage at Lyons), to put in several 
dull incidents (Education of the Queen, Signing of the 
Peace), and some sad ones (the affair of Pont-de-ce, 
the Flight from Blois). Rubens found in Henri 
IV's life "material enough, full and varied, for more 
than ten galleries," but in that of Marie de Medicis, 
both the exigencies of the subject and the method 
of the painter demanded that he should find some- 
thing in his fervid rhetoric to enliven the dreary, 
spiritless language of the truth. 

The most necessary things for the garnishing of 




THE BIRTH OF LOUIS XIII 

Painted for the Medici Gallery, the Louvre (between 1622 and 1625) 



THE MEDICI GALLERY 103 

his canvases were beautiful nudes in floating drap- 
eries, so he could not do without mythological and 
allegorical figures. Nothing could be easier to the 
imagination of a humanist than the personification 
of ideas, and minds still boiling from the fire of the 
Renaissance mixed Olympus as naturally with their 
emotions as the romantic soul brings nature into 
all human joys and sorrows. To dress Marie de 
Medicis as Pallas or Juno and surround her with 
goddesses, Fecundity, Peace, Power, to make her 
crush the monsters, Envy, Pride, and Tumult, was 
to put into painting the poetic language of the day. 
As Malherbe says 

Sans fard et sans flatterie, 
C'est Pallas que cette Marie 
Par qui nous sommes gouvernes 

in an ode to Marie de Medicis, in which we meet 
Furies, Peace, Justice, Victory, the Tritons, all the 
personages of Rubens' gallery. Racan describes the 
Regency in the same style: 

Deja la DIscorde enragee 
Sortait des gouffres de l'enfer, 
Deja la France ravagee 
Revoyait les siecles de fer. 
Et deja toutes les furies 
Renouvelant leurs barbaries 



io4 



RUBENS 



Rendaient les vices triomphants 
Par une impiete si noire 
Que la nuit meme n'eut pu croire 
Avoir produit de tels enfants. 1 

Does not this read like a description of the pic- 
ture in which Apollo chases the infernal deities? 
Later in the same poem Louis XIII conducts the 
Ship of France, a metaphor used by Rubens, and 
as in the painting, the glory of Henri IV is expressed 
by an ascent to the stars. 

It is certain that this mythology has not lost as 
much of its plastic charm for our eyes, as it has of 
the poetic one which it held for the minds of that 
time. These pagan gods and goddesses not only 
delight our sight with their beauty, but also suggest 
to our minds ideas which without them could not 
be expressed. To give the exuberant joy of a cele- 
bration, the hoarse enthusiasm of a town acclaim- 
ing its queen, nereids gaily beat the waves and 
twist their supple bodies or tritons with puffed 
cheeks blow conch shells with all their force. The 
commonplace idea of the happiness of the Regency 
brought into existence exquisite forms with lumin- 
ous pearl-like flesh, glowing with life both human and 
divine. In their Olympian atmosphere these active 

1 Verses for the marriage of Anne of Austria. 



THE MEDICI GALLERY 105 

genial gods of Rubens give to the reign of Marie de 
Medicis a quality that is most majestic, most hyper- 
bolic and also most false. This is undoubtedly 
true, but under the circumstances panegyric was 
necessary and sincerity optional. Rubens developed 
his theme and enlarged his subject without being 
its dupe. In that charming fresh picture where 
Marie de Medicis holds the balance surrounded by 
loves and nymphs, down in the corner where the 
signature should be, a satyr sticks his tongue out 
at us and with a cynical laugh seems to tell us not 
to take all this fine display too seriously. 

Historical accuracy was not sacrificed, and the 
Queen was still the central figure around which 
everything turned. From two sketches made from 
life in Paris, one profile and one almost full face, 
honest documents which show delicate features in a 
pasty face, Rubens was able to give the necessary 
likeness to a portrait which Marie de Medicis would 
recognise with satisfaction. Royal and full of pride 
at the ceremonies of her marriage and coronation, 
she is also charming in the widow's mourning which 
shows off her blonde colouring even better, but it 
is as a mother that she is most touching, and it is 
impossible to forget her relaxed pose and weary yet 
happy face after the birth of Louis XIII. She al- 
ways appears smiling, and her slightly heavy tran- 



106 RUBENS 

quillity contrasts with the excitement of the men and 
gods eager to serve her. Henri IV is always excel- 
lent. His Gascon mask and keen look, with grey 
beard brushed forward and bristling moustaches 
under the twisted nose, rejoiced Rubens' brush. 
With an expressive gesture he finds the portrait of 
Marie charming, and not constrained in the least 
by his role of Jupiter he mounts the Olympian eagle 
without any ceremony and ends by gaily scaling 
heaven, "gaillard" even in his apotheosis. 

Rubens has given his courtier soldiers fine poses 
and an air of elegance that is at the same time 
brusque, mingling the grace of the court with the 
picturesqueness of the camp. Their hair hangs in 
graceful curls over lace collars, but their moustaches 
bristle fiercely, and threatening rapiers break the 
rich folds of their cloaks. The ladies, with faces 
framed in delicate ruffs, advance slowly and haughtily, 
and the long robes with trains of white satin, which 
drag after them, prolong the rhythm of their tran- 
quil march. 

And as if there were not enough men and heroes 
and gods to fill the history of Marie de Medicis, 
Rubens has brought in all those animals, horses and 
dogs, serpents, fish, lions, and allegorical monsters 
which he learnt to paint in that studio at Wapper, 
from which he sent out so many hunting scenes. 



THE MEDICI GALLERY 107 

Among all this he has put his usual settings, 
porticos open to the sky, church or palatial archi- 
tecture, lifted curtains, oriental carpets, fields and 
fortresses, for his realistic imagination always sets 
the scene in a landscape and never transports us to 
the clouds except upon Olympus. Here and there 
in an empty space are allegorical accessories — horns 
of plenty, flowers, fruits, breastplates, shields, 
morions, arquebuses, till the gallery seems to con- 
tain the whole of Rubens' world. 

As to light and colour, he seems to have made here 
a resume of all the effects that he loved best. Ex- 
cept for one or two canvases where a sombre tone 
was obligatory, the whole gallery is bathed in light. 
The darks, even, are not absence of light, empty places 
for the eye, nor do shadows gather on edges and in 
corners to give value to the brilliance which they 
survived; they are living, beautiful touches on steel 
or silk which give play to reflections. In the even 
light Rubens has given the simple colours their full 
intensity, especially the yellows and reds. As usual 
he is less free with the greens and violets, but blue, 
which he never likes, had to be used often because 
it is the colour of France. The coronation of the 
queen forced it upon him, and the elegant Minerva, 
who symbolises France, an equivocal personage with 
the grace of a woman and the air of a vigorous 



108 RUBENS 

youth, drags after her each time she appears a blue 
mantle sprinkled with gold fleurs-de-lis. Rubens 
warmed and deepened this blue and darkened it as 
much as possible to give it body. It is the only 
colour which he seldom uses light. Red, on the 
contrary, pleased him. He liked the colour which, 
even when pure and clear, is not inharmonious and 
he used it frankly, without any relief but one or 
two dark shadows in the heavy folds, not weakening 
it by half tones or shades in the reflections, and on 
each canvas, from some mantle or drapery, this 
intense vermilion rings out among the other colours. 
His beautiful yellows are quite different, iridescent, 
smooth, violet in their shadows, and barred with 
golden light on their shining folds. The reappear- 
ance of these dominants in all the pictures of the 
gallery gives unity to this vast decoration, and there 
is no monotony in the sense of one parentage and 
one palette for the whole. 

All these personages, in such varied attitudes, 
move in the same scale, sometimes against sombre 
backgrounds which throw out the flesh tints, but 
more often set in delicate tones, which make an 
atmosphere about them. Strong, frank colours, on 
a sustained grey, oppose the solidity of material 
objects against the limpid air. Rubens used this 
background more and more, and the woof against 




THE LANDING OF MARIE DE MEDICIS AT MARSEILLES 
A sketch of the painting in the Medici Gallery. Old Pinakothek. Munich (between 1622 and 162s) 



THE MEDICI GALLERY 109 

which he made his carnations glow best was grey, 
from satiny slate to silver white melting into reflec- 
tions of rose and blue. These delicate modulations 
surround with silence the sharp or delicate notes of 
draperies and flesh tints. But when Rubens takes 
us into the world of the gods the golden air becomes 
an iridescent twilight, and in the heaven of an 
apotheosis where Olympian felicity reigns the bodies 
are radiant, the blood is less red, the flesh less warm, 
and all life is penetrated by light. 

Of course there is not in the Medici gallery that 
intimacy, that depth of confidence that an artist 
can put into his more moving masterpieces. This is 
decorative painting for which nothing else could be 
asked, and yet look at it: majestic queens, haughty 
ladies, gallant cavaliers, iridescent silks and hang- 
ings and armour; a great court fete and all the 
pomp and ceremony of Catholic worship, gay smiling 
nymphs, white supple nereids and leaping tritons, 
all the serene and idle happiness of Olympus; a 
heroic humanity placed between heaven and earth, 
where men and gods mingle, equal in life and beauty, 
and under all this splendour a half-seen world of 
dark and hideous monsters, the revolt of vanquished 
ugliness. Such is the worthy setting for royal fetes 
which the painter had known how to find in the life 
of the queen, and if one is sometimes chilled by the 



HO RUBENS 

falsity of all this happiness, it is impossible not to 
enjoy the play of the spectacle. 

The Assumption, the Magi of Antwerp and the 
Medici gallery mark the end of a generous period, 
one stage in the development of a genius. Rubens' 
hand had reached such skill, and his imagination 
had so familiarised itself with great spectacles, that 
all these historical scenes have the quality of a dream 
of the painter and express above all else the trium- 
phant enthusiasm of his spirit. But just at this 
moment a cruel and unexpected sorrow drove him 
from his atelier and interrupted his work for four 
years. 




ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN 

Antwerp Cathedral (completed in 1626) 



PART THIRD 
(162 6- i 640) 



CHAPTER I 

RUBENS AS AMBASSADOR 

In 1626 Isabella Brandt died suddenly. The 
painter's grief was so great that for a long time it 
changed all his habits of life and checked his work. 
He had not the courage for stoic impassiveness. 
"It seems to me right that such a loss should be 
deeply felt, and as the only remedy for all sorrows 
is the forgetfulness that comes with time, I must 
wait for that for my help; but it will be very diffi- 
cult to separate the sorrow of this loss from the 
memory of the person whom I shall respect and 
honour as long as I live. I think that a journey is 
the only thing to relieve me from the sight of so 
many objects which necessarily renew my grief, for 
she only filled the house — now so empty. She only 
rested beside me on my deserted couch, but the new 
sights which a journey offers occupy the imagina- 
tion and furnish no food for these regrets, now con- 
tinually renewed. But even when I travel it is 



114 RUBENS 

myself that I take always with me." 1 The desire 
for change was aroused in Rubens, and circumstances 
helped him to gratify it. For several years his energy 
was turned in a new direction. He filled the post 
of ambassador. The events of his life are connected 
with the history of his country, and his pictures are 
few and less important. 

Rubens had never ceased to be interested in the 
politics of Europe, and his correspondence shows 
with what care he kept himself informed through 
his friends of all that happened in France. When 
he went to the court of Marie de Medicis to arrange 
the pictures in the Gallery of the Luxembourg, the 
Archduchess Isabella had secretly charged him to 
find out the feeling of France in regard to a recon- 
ciliation between the United Provinces and the Low 
Countries. He made friends with Buckingham in 
Paris, and kept up his relations with the English 
Minister and his charge d'affaires, the painter Ger- 
bier. At this moment Buckingham was making 
trouble between France and England, and an under- 
standing with Spain seemed to him useful. The 
ruler of the Low Countries, on her side, wanted 
peace with England. She chose Rubens to carry 
on these negotiations, because of her confidence in 

1 Letter to Dupuy, July 15, 1626. 



RUBENS AS AMBASSADOR 115 

his ability and his love of peace. The King of 
Spain thought her choice of an ambassador a great 
mistake: "A man of such a mediocre position" to 
present "a proposition of such gravity" was enough 
to cast discredit on the kingdom. But was not Ger- 
bier also a painter? And this was no affair of 
plenipotentiaries. These were secret agents who 
could be disavowed if necessary, and who could not 
conduct their negotiations openly, for Richelieu had 
gone forward and already had secured the signature 
of Spain to an offensive treaty against England. 
The Escurial itself must have found it embarrassing 
to follow Rubens' amicable proposals, so the plan 
of a treaty, worked out with great mystery at 
Utrecht between Rubens and Gerbier, failed for the 
moment, and Richelieu preserved the alliance with 
Spain against England long enough to take La 
Rochelle. But after this defeat the English re- 
doubled their preparations and seemed ready to 
make even more concessions to secure the alliance 
of Spain. The King of Spain, Philip IV, understood 
on his side the advantages of this connection. He 
called Rubens to Madrid to take up again the nego- 
tiations which had dropped, and the painter-am- 
bassador once more left Antwerp. 

Rubens' departure had to seem merely a pro- 
fessional matter. He carried some pictures with 



Il6 RUBENS 

him, and at Madrid painted any portraits that were 
ordered. "Here, as always, I am painting and have 
already made an equestrian portrait of his Majesty, 
who has expressed his approbation and satisfaction. 
As I am living in the palace he comes to see me 
almost every day. I have also painted at my 
leisure portraits of all the members of the royal 
family who have graciously posed for me, to fill 
the order of my mistress, the Most Serene Infanta." 1 
It is certain that between the long delays of Spanish 
diplomacy there were many hours useless for busi- 
ness which Rubens dedicated to his art. Philip IV, 
the Queen, Olivares and the princes, were painted. 
The Titians collected by Philip II were copied by 
the Fleming. He met Velazquez, who at twenty- 
nine, had already begun his brilliant career. Rubens 
spent more than six months at the Court of Madrid, 
petted by Philip IV and his Ministers, and over- 
whelmed with orders. 

The diplomatic questions remained unsettled. 
Buckingham was assassinated, La Rochelle was taken 
and England, exhausted, hesitated between the pro- 
posals of Spain and those of France, between Riche- 
lieu- and Olivares. Rubens was well fitted to con- 
tinue what he had begun. He was sent to London. 

1 To Peiresc, Dec. 2, 1628. 



RUBENS AS AMBASSADOR 117 

But first to increase the prestige of her ambassador, 
Isabella gave him letters patent for "the office of 
Secretary of her Privy Council, with a reversion of 
the title to his eldest son." Rubens left Madrid 
on April 29, 1629. He passed through Paris, where 
he visited the Palace of the Luxembourg, Brussels 
where he saw the archduchess, and Antwerp where 
for a few days he had the pleasure of his own home. 
When he reached London, early in August, his 
mood was depressed. "Travelling interests him less 
now that he is tired. His strength is failing, and 
from all this fatigue he is deriving no profit but 
that of dying a little wiser." 1 

But Rubens could not help being flattered by his 
reception in England. Charles I, who had already 
insisted on the painter's sending him a portrait of 
himself, declared his pleasure in the mission "not 
only because of the proposals which the ambassador 
brought, but also because of the desire he had felt 
to know a man of such talent." 2 The diplomat had, 
it is true, less success than the man. Four months 
before Rubens arrived an agent of Richelieu had 
passed through, and England had signed a treaty 
of alliance with France (April 24). But what dif- 
ference did that make? One does not break off 

1 Gerbier to Cottington, Feb. 1 7, 1630. 

2 Cottington to Don Carlos Colonna, May 22, 1629. 




Il8 RUBENS 

negotiations with an artist whom one is so pleased 
to receive, and Charles I at least promised, "on 
his royal faith," not to make a league with France 
against Spain. But although feted everywhere, 
Rubens was restless and eager to leave. He waited 
impatiently for the plenipotentiary that Olivares 
was sending to sign the treaty. "The Sieur Rubens 
has taken leave of the king and queen and is 
ready to depart in three or four days, in spite of 
the general desire to see him remain, for many 
reasons." Whether addressed to the ambassador, the 
painter or the man, these regrets do Rubens honour. 
He left London loaded with honours and presents 
and important orders for the decoration of Whitehall. 
This work was finished in 1635, but he did not go 
himself to put it in place "because he had a horror 
of courts." 

On his return he received the reward of his zeal 
and intelligence. Charles I had given him knight- 
hood. The archduchess wished him to have the 
same title of Chevalier in Flanders. The Council 
of Madrid remembered that Charles V had made 
Titian Chevalier de St. Jacques, so Philip IV secured 
the honour for his favourite painter. "He having," 
said the prince, "honourably and usefully acquitted 
himself of his duty to our entire satisfaction, showing 
zeal, adroitness and ability." Rubens now at the 



RUBENS AS AMBASSADOR 119 

height of "favour with the Most Serene Infanta and 
the most important ministers of the King." But 
he did not want to leave his home. Before retiring 
definitely to private life, however, he undertook two 
more diplomatic missions. 

When Marie de Medicis, in flight after the Journee 
des Dupes, took refuge in the Spanish Low Countries, 
it was naturally Rubens who received her. He took 
her part in the^ quarrel, and asked help from the 
Court of Spain for the fugitive queen and her second 
son, the Duke of Orleans. Olivares would make 
no promises, and the queen got nothing from the 
Low Countries but Rubens' welcome. This com- 
plete rupture between the queen-mother and the 
Court of France had one unfortunate result. It pre- 
vented Rubens from finishing the Gallery of Henri IV. 

In 1630 the United Provinces started an active 
campaign against the Spanish Low Countries. The 
archduchess tried at once to renew the truce, and 
it was again Rubens whom she sent to negotiate with 
the Prince of Orange. This last mission brought 
the painter-ambassador only worry and disillusion. 
The result was practically nothing, and he had to 
submit to the arrogance of a noble ambassador, the 
Duke of Aerschot. This was really the end. Rubens, 
now fifty-five years old, did not take another mo- 
ment of his life from his family and his painting. 



120 RUBENS 

The Chevalier Rubens, intimate friend of arch- 
dukes, feted by the kings of Europe and their min- 
isters, felt each day a stronger desire for work and 
repose of spirit. "I profited," he writes, "by a little 
secret mission at Brussels, to throw myself at her 
Highness' feet and to pray her as the reward of all 
my trouble, to discharge me in future from all such 
missions, and to grant that in future I only serve 
her in my own home. But I had more difficulty 
in obtaining this grace than I ever had for any 
other favour, and it was only on condition of con- 
tinuing certain secret services which I can do with 
less inconvenience to myself." 1 

Now that he is again settled and happy in the 
good city of Antwerp, and feels in himself the warmth 
and life of a second youth, he defends his work 
against anything that might distract him from it 
for a moment. Again the events of his life are 
pictures. 

^ToPeiresc, Dec. 18, 1636. 



CHAPTER II 

THE LYRIC QUALITY OF RUBENS 

One thing is true of all great artists who have had 
a long period of production, and whose facility of 
execution and power of work has not lessened. The 
longer we study them, and the more our minds follow 
the development of their genius, the more we find 
beautiful, profound and touching that work of the 
end of their lives which has seemed the most 
incomprehensible to our intelligence and rather iso- 
lated by its singularity. This is the period when 
the artist, sure of his means, goes straight to the 
point, making no concessions to fashion or to the 
tastes which he might offend. 

It is thus with Titian, Rembrandt, Beethoven and 
Victor Hugo, and also with the older Rubens, as 
always more tender, more spiritual, more delicate, 
he lets us see even further into the heaven of his 
genius. Through these last ten years it is noticeable 
that between the large paintings which were ordered 
there are many pictures which seem more personal 



12 2 RUBENS 

in their inspiration. The portrait of a friend, a 
familiar landscape, a brilliant fancy, quantities of 
work of less importance, but always the faithful 
expression of the mood of the moment, the con- 
fidences of a soul. 

Rubens' emotions impressed themselves more than 
ever on his work. In his earlier pictures he had 
fitted his effects to the idea which he wished to ex- 
press, and his method adapted itself to the variety 
of the subjects. But little by little one chord be- 
came dominant, that which expressed his affection, 
his grateful yielding to the forces which until now 
had given him a full and happy life. Through this 
period, no matter what the subject he is treating, 
there is always joy in it, a feast to the eye in har- 
mony with the happiness of his mind. Now that 
his hand has greater skill than ever before and his 
eye a correctness which takes all effort from the 
work; as soon as an idea is born, sensibility riots 
and works of art blossom vibrating with life. Purely 
literary criticism would say that having been more 
oratorical and more descriptive, Rubens had become 
more lyric; after having striven to astonish the 
world by the splendours of his imagination, he now, 
without troubling about the feelings which he 
aroused, allowed the light of his inner genius to 
shine out with all its intimate purity. 



THE LYRIC QUALITY OF RUBENS 123 

The first consequence of this was an increased lack 
of care in his compositions; I mean by that the 
equilibrium produced by a skillful arrangement of 
figures. The difference is marked between the 
Descent from the Cross or even the Assumption and 
the Way of the Cross at Brussels. The latter pic- 
ture is much more spontaneous. It has been less 
planned, or rather, the work has been realised at 
the same time that it is being thought out. Rubens 
attacks with a boldness that is always happy, know- 
ing well that he will not be stopped by lack of 
breath, and that he will find the material which he 
wants as he goes along. Each episode of that great 
canvas has the vehemence of an inspiration, two or 
three figures are sometimes sufficient to fill a vast 
space with their superb poses, Christ Menacing the 
World at Brussels, Death of the Magdalen at Lille. 
In this last composition there are no more balanced 
groupings, no more symmetrical architecture, few 
geometrical lines; instead there is landscape with 
its unlooked for fancies and its irregularity, the sky 
covered with clouds and crossed by a flight of 
archangels. "There are lines which are monsters," 
Delacroix says, " straight lines, regular serpen- 
tines, even two parallels." Bit by bit the hand of 
Rubens seemed to lose its calm, sometimes carried 
away by tumultuous visions, by turns observant and 



124 RUBENS 

caressing, obeying only the feeling of his heart. 
This was the way that Delacroix dreamed of paint- 
ing, and would have painted had he had more cer- 
tainty in his execution, less contortion in his force; 
if he had given years of conscientious study to reality 
before abandoning himself to passionate lyricism. 

The sketches show with what increasing ease 
Rubens expressed a body in action. The rapid exe- 
cution of even a first study proves that the idea 
was born complete, ready for realisation without a 
moment's hesitation or effort. With a few strokes of 
the brush flesh glows and action appears. At the 
same time a background quickly rubbed in opposes 
to the figures a grey well adapted to the amount of 
warmth or light which they need. A composition 
may be enriched, strengthened, given more balance 
or accent, but the effects of light do not change or 
the general colouring. The idea is never expressed 
by a drawing of contour or outline. Line was too 
unreal for the concrete art. Even in the drawings 
the stroke of the crayon is heavy and red chalk is used 
in the modelling. Rubens rendered directly the dif- 
ference of illumination which brings out the relief, 
but in drawing he preferred the touch of the brush 
which models with light, to the line which dis- 
engages the flat figures from the background. His 
forms detach themselves clearly from all vagueness, 



THE LYRIC QUALITY OF RUBENS 125 

and spring at once into reality and their proper 
values. "His greatest quality, if it is possible to 
rank one above the others, is this extraordinary 
impetus, this prodigious life. Without this quality 
there can be no great artist. Titian and Veronese 
are shallow beside him." 1 

It is true that in their different parts these figures 
often lack distinction, grace and nervous alertness. 
Notice the hands, which Rubens almost always 
paints soft, round and rather commonplace. But 
then again look at an entire body or a torso; it is 
unique, perfect, firm and yet supple and articu- 
lated. What other painter has rendered as he does 
the inclination of a bent-over body, the rounded 
thrust of a thigh, the shoulder of an arm in motion? 
He preferred unusual positions and violent motions, 
strange curves, and the stretching of elastic flesh 
which has weight and substance. "I like his em- 
phasis, I like his figures, overstrained or relaxed." 2 
But never in any body in action do you feel the 
heavy, fixed pose of the model. In a brief syn- 
thesis, his eye has seen the essential movement, 
realised quickly the muscular contractions, and 
has given to the figure the vigour and lightness and 
fire of life. 

1 Delacroix. Journal, Oct. 21, i860. 

2 Delacroix. Journal, March 6, 1847. 



126 RUBENS 

His painting grows more and more full of light. 
He had long ago renounced the manner of Cara- 
vaggio and given up the opaque shadows dear to 
the lovers of bold relief. Even when a shadow is 
sharply accented there is always reflected colour 
to give it luminosity, a touch of vermilion in a 
crease of flesh, a clear violet in the fold of a yellow 
dress. All these suggestions of light lift the ob- 
ject, make air move around it, and prevent its 
sinking into the background, and if it is under an 
open sky, give it all the reflections of full day. 
Rubens no longer used the contrast of luminous 
flesh tints with opaque darkness, neither did he 
commit the absurdity of putting studio effects out of 
doors. His shadows are no longer heavy things, 
but light and full of air with the fluidity of atmos- 
phere, and it was this transformation that led him 
to discoveries which began a revolution in the art 
of painting. 

Much of the quality of Correggio lies in a soft 
melting of the contours, which smoothed the passage 
of light into shadow and took all hardness from 
their opposition. The colouring of Titian or Gior- 
gione owed its invincible charm to the balance be- 
tween light and dark, and to the skillful harmony 
which drew all the colours together by a common 
quality. The medium is strong and thick and the 



THE LYRIC QUALITY OF RUBENS 127 

colours are on the same key, very warm and vi- 
brant, of equal power of content. Rubens' paint- 
ing is freer, more detached and spread out and sel- 
dom unified by a solid undertone. He gets what 
he wants with little effort, by a hurried rubbing in 
of grey or bitumen on which the spots of colour 
nicker, gay, capricious, often without mingling. 
This colour amuses and refreshes the eye. After 
looking long at Rubens, Titian seems for the moment 
solid and heavy, and Veronese flat and without 
atmosphere. 

All art with Rubens is reduced to a play of colour 
in diaphanous air. The few shadows are volatile and 
translucent. In this light vapour, flesh tints and 
draperies throw back gay reflections and blonde 
skins bathed in the warm air have never, with all 
their freshness, the polished surface of porcelains. 
The delicate colour keeps its sweetness and its reso- 
nance and the mother-of-pearl of a throat or a thigh 
gleams softly through the glow which warms it. 
In proportion as Rubens uses half tones and broken 
tints the brilliancy of clear colour is less necessary 
and less frequent. With a more limited range he 
obtains greater riches. The triumphant red and 
sumptuous yellow grow paler and die in lovely 
modulations of grey and rose colour, and in this 
brightness all sorts of blacks can play their parts 



128 RUBENS 

without being absorbed into the shadow. The 
simplicity of this method astonished Fromentin. 
There is nothing here of the complicated construc- 
tion and subtilities of Delacroix. It is a vigorous 
and healthy pleasure which Rubens offers us, and 
his principal skill consists in not overworking his 
colours and preserving, as de Piles says, ''their vir- 
ginity to these colours which he used with a free 
hand, not disturbing them too much by mixing, 
for fear that being corrupted they would lose some 
of their brilliancy and the truth which they had made 
appear in the painting from the first day that the 
work began." 



CHAPTER III 

HELENA FOURMENT 

A letter written by Rubens to his friend Peiresc 
four years after his marriage explains his motives. 
"I had made up my mind to marry again, not think- 
ing myself yet old enough for celibacy, and as after 
long abstinence legitimate joys are sweet, I chose 
a young wife from an honest, middle-class family, al- 
though everyone urged me to settle at court. But 
I feared there that evil of pride, which usually, par- 
ticularly among women, belongs to noble birth. 
Also I preferred someone who would not blush 
when I took up my brush, and to tell the truth, it 
seemed hard to me to exchange the precious treasure 
of my liberty for the caresses of an old woman." 1 
Far from being an old woman, Helena Fourment was 
almost a child. She was just sixteen and Rubens 
fifty-three. He had known her long, had watched 
her grow up, and had already painted her in his 

1 To Peiresc, Dec. 18, 1684. 



130 RUBENS 

Education of the Virgin (Museum at Antwerp), 
where she looks graceful and charming in a pretty, 
grey dress with glossy folds showing a figure already 
rounded. A Fourment, one of Helena's brothers, 
had married a sister of Isabella Brandt, and the 
two families celebrated the marriage on December 
6, 1630, at the Church of St. Jacques, without 
bans, because Rubens was impatient and would not 
wait until the end of Advent {cum dispensatione pro- 
clamationis et temporis clansi). 

Of the young wife's character, mind or tastes we 
know hardly anything, but of her physique and her 
warm, blonde beauty there is nothing that we have 
not been shown. No wife was ever more passion- 
ately glorified than Helena Fourment in her hus- 
band's works. On the threshold of age, his brow 
already marred by wrinkles and more than one 
white hair in his beard, a tender emotion awoke 
in the heart of Rubens which made his eyes more 
sensitive to the fresh beauty of young flesh, and 
added to his masculine and robust nature a fervid 
devotion and joy of the senses, while Helena, gentle, 
grateful and amused, flowered sweetly under the 
warm caress of such a love. Rubens felt that he 
was beginning life again and never had he been so 
young. From this time on there was such happi- 
ness in his life that he could not refrain from pro- 



HELENA FOURMENT 



131 



claiming it. The smiling face of his young wife 
appears constantly on his canvas, and soon he 
could paint no face without some resemblance, 
faint or strong, to the lovely Helena, an evidence, 
conscious or not, of his ardent admiration. His 
portraits sufficiently reveal to us the affectionate 
intimacy of his married life. 

We see them first, a few months after the mar- 
riage, walking on a clear day in their garden (Pina- 
kothek, Munich). Rubens is happy in doing the 
honours of his estate; with an affectionate gesture he 
bends his fine head and with one hand on Helena's 
arm points to a little Italian pavilion where a table 
is laid. Helena, in a wide-brimmed hat and short 
skirt like a coquettish gardener, lingers to smile at 
us with her wondering, ingenuous face. The trees 
are in blossom, the garden dotted with flowers 
glows in the sunlight, the turkeys and peacocks pick 
up the grain which an old woman throws them, and 
a dog is frolicking on the path. Men, animals and 
plants are all gay and smiling in the warmth of this 
day of sunshine and love. Again Helena is seated 
in an armchair under a portico, where the wind blows 
sumptuous curtains around the columns. She is 
richly dressed in the Flemish fashion, with a black 
robe opened over a white satin skirt embroidered in 
gold. Her hair, cut straight across the forehead, 



132 RUBENS 

puffs out behind her ears in short curls, framing a 
face radiant with youth. Large eyes, widely open, 
surprised and gay, a nose slightly turned up with open 
nostrils, a little mouth ready to smile, the upper lip 
well arched, and the lower round and firm. Below 
this plump face a delicate chin and dimples in the 
cheeks. Lovely, active health, spiced with mis- 
chief and gaiety. Again we see her in outdoor 
dress, standing in the doorway of her house (Collec- 
tion of the Baron Alph. de Rothschild). She is 
going to drive, for a coach with horses hastens to 
the door, and this time she is dressed in Spanish 
style, a black dress and violet ribbons, with a cap 
of velvet on her head and a long veil of crepe floating 
behind her. She grew more and more fond of these 
sombre costumes which threw into relief the bril- 
liancy of her fair colouring and made her skin seem 
more white and her blood more quick and red in the 
severe dress of a duenna or a widow. 

But this was not all Helena's beauty. She had 
other hidden charms, and Rubens was too much in 
love to hesitate to celebrate their beauty. He sur- 
prised her one day on the way to her bath, and she 
yielded to her husband's fancy for painting her as 
she was {The Little Fur Coat at Vienna). She would 
be quite naked but for the fur mantle thrown across 
her shoulders, which she holds in place with a charm- 




THE LITTLE FUR COAT 

Imperial Museum. Vienna (about 1631) 



HELENA FOURMENT 133 

ing motion. The little body is rounded, and each 
movement shows soft folds of flesh, the legs are a 
little too fully modelled with rather large kneecaps; 
but how graceful and charming she is, plump and 
tender and dimpled. And how loving the eye which 
followed the line of those soft arms to the supple, 
lithe hands, the drawing of those plump fingers with 
pointed, rosy nails. The painting of a lover, a poem 
of love, frank without subtility, where Rubens, in 
rendering a bit of delicate flesh wrapped in a dark 
mantle, has hidden nothing of his sensuous pleasure 
because it is ennobled by the beauty of his art. This 
is not the last time that Helena Fourment appears 
in this way in her husband's pictures. After that 
day almost all the heroines of mythology had the 
full charms of the little Fleming. Before this time 
none of Rubens' nudes had had the indiscreet ac- 
curacy of the portraits of Helena, the drawing was 
always more or less generalised and made impersonal, 
but here it is the revelation without reserve of a char- 
acter, and an immediately recognisable human body. 
After this manner Helena passed through all the 
adventures of the women who were too beautiful, 
in mythology or in the Bible. She is one of those 
who cannot show themselves without arousing de- 
sire, and she shows herself without hesitation. We 
see her as Bathsheba Coining from the Bath (Dresden 



134 RUBENS 

Museum). While she luxuriously abandons herself 
to the care of her maid, she forgets to cover her legs, 
not reflecting that they are quite sufficient to ruin 
David with all his wisdom. Just to see that thought- 
less young face makes us sure that Uriah's troubles 
are beginning. Only a little dog seems to be 
troubled by this risk to the honour of his master and 
barks at the negro who brings the love message. 
Again as Susanna (Munich) she lets herself be sur- 
prised in the bath at the risk of tempting the virtue 
of the passerby . Two licentious old men are already 
leaning over the balustrade, and to save her mod- 
esty she can only turn her back and show the 
softest of nudes, and again has no one to protect 
her but the little dog with his virtuous barking. 
But Helena risked one day a much more serious 
adventure. A coarse boor has flung himself upon 
her, seized her brutally and is throwing her down 
(Munich). This time it is doubtful if she will es- 
cape; the idyll is not in the least mythological, 
Helena is not a nymph and the gallant is no satyr. 
We would be tempted to pity her if the mischievous 
eyes and half smile of the victim were not so re- 
assuring. Helena's troubles are sometimes more 
distinguished, for there are days when she plays 
tragedy, as in the role of Dido (Beistegui Collec- 
tion). Aeneas has just left her and, desperate, 



HELENA FOURMENT 135 

dressed only in a diadem, her eyes cast up to heaven, 
she has thrown herself on a couch and is threaten- 
ing her white bosom with a sword, while a bust of the 
unfaithful one looks down on all the drama of 
which he is the cause. If she only does not take her 
role too seriously! Again as Andromeda in Despair 
she is tied to a black rock (Berlin). It was an 
extraordinary monster who could control himself 
before such appetising flesh, and who yet did not 
know that so beautiful a being could not be made 
for misfortune. What lovely despair! How the 
sobs shake that delicate breast ! How well the plump 
arms, raised above her head, show the contours of 
body and hips! A charming pose which Helena 
was wise to take again when she wanted the shep- 
herd Paris to give her the golden apple. 

Rubens did not paint these pictures for his own 
intimate pleasure alone. It is true that a tradition 
reported by Michel says that after his death Ma- 
dame Rubens hesitated to offer some of his pictures 
for sale, and a special clause in his will gave The 
Little Fur Coat to her. But was not that because the 
picture was a portrait with no historical trans- 
formation? It is certainly not one of the most in- 
discreet of the nudes painted from Helena. Many 
others went about the world in which no one could 
fail to recognise the artist/ s model. 



136 RUBENS 

From the time of his return from Madrid until 
his death, Rubens was loaded with orders by the 
King of Spain, Philip IV. The new governor of the 
Netherlands, Archduke Ferdinand, was entrusted 
with the sending of these pictures, and here is what 
he writes in 1639 announcing the departure of a 
Judgment of Paris: 

"It is without doubt in the opinion of all painters 
Rubens' best work. I have accused him of only 
one fault, on which point he gave me no satisfac- 
tion, the extreme nudity of the three goddesses. 
The artist responded that exactly in that consisted 
the merit of the picture. The Venus in the middle 
is a very good portrait of the painter's wife, the 
most beautiful of all the ladies of Antwerp." 

Notwithstanding the austerity of the Cardinal- 
Archduke, these pagan figures and suggestive nudes 
pleased the devout and amorous Philip IV. He 
loved to see on the walls of his palace, even in his 
own rooms, the mythology of Ovid, warmed and 
revivified by the full-blooded art of Rubens. And 
everywhere Helena frolicked joyously in the woods 
and beside the fountains, and when a satyr ap- 
pears, even though the horned hunter is driving a 
flock of white frightened nymphs through the dark 
foliage, the danger does not disturb her serenity, 
nor his audacity revolt her soft virtue. 



HELENA FOURMENT 137 

In the Offering to Venus (Vienna), while young 
girls surrounded by garlands of amoretti are im- 
ploring the goddess, some gay maidens are already 
in the arms of the eager shepherds, and Helena seems 
to respond to the hoofed gallant who carries her 
oft only by the ripples of her silver laugh. She is 
always there in the foreground with shining eyes, 
distracting and dimpled, as careless and naked as 
a little animal. 

Was it not Helena who inspired those exquisite 
pictures called Gardens of Love (Prado Museum, 
Collection of Edm. de Rothschild), into which 
Rubens had seemed to put all the poetry of an 
elegant and pleasure-loving society? On a hot after- 
noon in autumn some young ladies are sitting in a 
park around a Renaissance fountain. With rose 
colour and pale blue, white satin and black velvet, 
changing lights on silken folds, the gold of hair, the 
soft whiteness of a throat, the bend of a neck, the 
spirited line of an outstretched ankle, all the lovely 
and fugitive things which charm and amuse the 
eye in a group of happy people, Rubens has created 
a theme which Watteau developed in his Fetes Ga- 
lantes. From all sides little loves come flying, carry- 
ing torches and flowers and crowns, all that could 
disarm the cruelty of a lady love. They push bold- 
ly into the groups, working with ardour in the cause 



138 RUBENS 

of the lovers. One has installed himself on the 
knees of a gay, buxom maiden, another softly ap- 
proaches a dreamer with an arrow traitorously hid- 
den behind his back; another pushes a large, vigor- 
ous blonde into the arms of a gallant. The men 
are charming with their long eyelids and hair in 
heavy curls. These fops are also soldiers. To-day 
they make love, whispering their tender speeches, 
absorbed in pleasing, but they are the same men 
who to-morrow fling themselves into the battle, 
eager to kill. But the ladies are even more ex- 
quisite in their grace and charm, and in most of 
them we have some memory of Helena. Helena 
hoyden, Helena fainting, Helena indifferent, Helena 
dreaming, Helena with eyes that do not see, ab- 
sorbed in listening to the voluptuous music awakened 
in her soul by the caress of the love that just 
touches her ear. 

Nevertheless, this wife, so loved, gave Rubens 
beautiful children — Clara Joanna, Franz, Isa- 
bella Helena, Peter Paul — a whole gentle nest of 
little loves to enliven his house and his pictures. 
The artist found a new expression of his love in 
painting her with a little maternal gravity added to 
her sweetness, but she is still the same. Look at 
her playing with her children (Louvre). Under the 
wide, feathered hat her pretty, interested face and 




■c 



V. 

w 
q 

< 

P* CD 



HELENA FOURMENT 139 

great, smiling eyes are almost serious with tenderness 
and her soft hands, grown more long and slender, 
have the suppleness and enveloping touch of a 
mother. She is wearing a white linen dress with 
ample folds, and her full, warm, round throat might 
recall the charms of a dimpled body, if anyone 
could fail in respect to such a Madonna. Her chil- 
dren are delicious; one with eager motions, eyes 
too wide open, and the air of a ferret, the other 
round and plump and too soft to have any lines. 
Barely rubbed in with fluid colour, barely touched by 
a brush quick to render familiar objects, in light 
tones of tawny gold, grey and blue, with a few 
touches of black, this unpretentious panel gives us 
more than a poetic and delicate picture. By all 
that it holds of affectionate sweetness in the warmth 
and love of its atmosphere of peace, it shows how 
at the summit of his career and of a life that had 
been one long triumph, and almost without struggle, 
the soul of this great artist found its deepest pleas- 
ure and his talent its most beautiful and touching 
expression in these happy and beloved beings. And 
when he puts himself in the picture, with what 
tenderness he watches the young mother guiding the 
little Clara's first steps (Collection of Adolph de 
Rothschild). In this large picture a harmony of 
black and green, intense in colour and yet lightly 



l 4 RUBENS 

handled, all the freshness and joy come from the 
faces of Helena and her child; he himself is at the 
side. Age has cast its shadow over his happiness. 
Beside all this youth in flower his face, a little weary 
and shadowed with sadness, shows us the gravity 
of his thoughts; reminds us that his share of life 
must be short, and that even uninterrupted happi- 
ness is no protection against suffering or the weari- 
ness of age. 



CHAPTER IV 

LANDSCAPES 

There was nothing in the life of Rubens to re- 
call the irregularities or the gilded domesticity of 
some of the great Italians of the Renaissance. His 
existence was that of an independent citizen, very 
rich, and distinguished by his work, and he did not 
allow fame to interfere with his activity. The only 
distraction which he needed was rest in the country 
during 1he summer months. This has been noted 
as a Flemish custom by Guichardin. "These men 
are not ambitious, at least not generally so; many 
of them having made their profits and honestly 
gained enough to live on, whether in public service 
or by the sale of merchandise or otherwise, they give 
up this work, and in a most praiseworthy manner 
retire to live in peace, using most of their fortune 
to make a country estate, to which they are much 
addicted, and living on the fruits of their land or 
on their income." 1 

1 Guichardin, tran. Belleforest, p. 36. 



142 RUBENS 

Even in 1627, before all his embassies, Rubens had 
bought a little property in the district of Ekeren. 
This was shortly after Isabella's death, to escape from 
the solitude and sadness of his house in Antwerp. 
He left his country soon after for several years, and 
when he returned with increased renown, and made 
young again by a new love, this little country house 
did not seem a large enough frame for his happiness. 

On May 12, 1635, he bought for ninety- three 
thousand florins (six hundred thousand francs of 
to-day) the Seigniory of Steen, a little south of 
Malines in the district of Ellewyt, a half day's jour- 
ney from Antwerp. It was a chateau in Renais- 
sance style, built in the middle of the sixteenth 
century of red brick, with windows and door trim- 
mings of white stone. Formerly a fortified place, it 
was surrounded by a moat and defended by a draw- 
bridge, and had preserved its feudal columbier, a 
square, crenelated tower. The property was large, 
with cultivated land, farms, woods and a pond. 
Rubens made important changes in his new home. 
He undoubtedly arranged an atelier, for his letters 
prove that during the months passed at Steen he 
never ceased to work, and even the tranquil country 
of which he had asked nothing but the joy of re- 
pose soon stirred his painter's soul. He had never 
been limited by the walls of his atelier, for it was 



LANDSCAPES 143 

in the life and fetes of village and court that he 
had found what made living beings of his gods and 
heroes. Now he discovered the charm which he 
had not had time before to recognise in the infinite 
stretch of the plain under a damp sky, in the leaves of 
a tree waving in the breeze, in the shadows of a 
thicket over a sunken road, and, naturally, without 
effort, perhaps in the hours when he was resting 
from his large compositions, Rubens became a land- 
scape painter. 

It was not the first time that he had painted this 
side of nature, for his hunting scenes had necessarily 
been placed in country settings, but in these, when 
the landscape was more than a simple decorative 
background, it was generally left to the hand of 
some pupil or friend, as in that gay garden of Eden 
at The Hague, a landscape by Breughel, in which 
Rubens has put with his most delicate touch an 
Adam and Eve. 

It must be acknowledged that Rubens' own meth- 
od, developed to produce large decorative paintings, 
was less fitted to landscape. His liquid colours and 
large, sweeping touch risked embarrassment and in- 
decision in the rendering of a broken, rocky soil, the 
sharp corner of a house, the straight line of a fence, 
or the moving foliage of a group of trees. He 
painted the velvety green of a meadow, or the chang- 



144 RUBENS 

ing grey of the clouds with the same breadth and 
vigour that he put into human flesh or the folds of 
drapery. He neither saw nor painted the land- 
scape from the point of view of the Dutch, who 
accented strongly the contrast between the lumi- 
nous ethereal atmosphere and the solidity of the 
earth, treating the sky with a smooth, blended 
facture and the solid, opaque forms with a sharp, 
visible touch. Such a method required an exact 
technique, carefully reasoned, and in spite of his 
clearly defined principles, Rubens' method allowed 
a steadily increasing r61e to spontaneity and in- 
spiration, even to caprice and fancy. In spite of 
the difference of climate and light, the landscapes 
of the Fleming suggest less the precision of Hob- 
bema and Potter than the breadth and warm solidity 
with more colour than atmosphere of Titian and 
Giorgione. 

But these landscapes, so simply executed, have 
great sincerity. Rubens painted the countryside as 
it stretched out around the Chateau of Steen, 
as Guicharden described seeing it from the bell 
tower in Antwerp: "A pleasing country is around, 
full of villages, hamlets, farms and lovely gar- 
dens." This was not nature sad and wild, majestic 
and conventional, such as his Flemish contem- 
poraries painted on their return from Italy, com- 



LANDSCAPES 145 

posed of rather solid vegetation and blue moun- 
tains and horizon. This was the earth which man 
had made fertile, and which had made him content ; 
it is not a solitude, but a friendly place. The village 
is near by, and near the village the great city ; there 
are signs everywhere of intelligent work — a church 
spire, a mill that stands out against the sky; the lit- 
tle bridge of stone or simple boards so frequent in 
Rubens' landscapes is characteristic of this popu- 
lous, well-watered plain, crossed by canals and 
roads. The painter never saw the country without 
the men and beasts who worked and lived in it. 
Different kinds of work or play belonged to different 
persons, or different hours of the day. In the morn- 
ing mists he saw a birdcatcher in his hiding-place 
or woodcutters at their task (Louvre). In the sum- 
mer afternoons it is the field work or milking the 
cows (Munich); after a storm, under a sky made 
gay by a rainbow, the work recommences and also 
the rustic pastorals (Munich, Louvre) ; at sunset the 
return to the village of peasants with their carts 
(Pitti Palace, National Gallery). Sometimes a rosy 
twilight behind the feudal silhouette of Steen 
aroused in his imagination a fierce cavalry skirmish 
of the Middle Ages. 

But the humble life of peasants and their animals 
was not the only thing in these landscapes; there 



146 RUBENS 

were also the splendid visions, the rich and varied 
changes which play between a luminous sky and 
fresh luxuriant vegetation. Rubens saw only the 
summer and autumn; he rarely represented the 
desolation of winter or the violence of a storm, and 
then only from imagination. There is a snowstorm 
in one of his pictures, but it is in the distance. The 
important thing is a group of men warming them- 
selves under a shed in the foreground (Royal Gallery 
at Windsor). He did occasionally paint stormy 
clouds, torrents, uprooted trees, but these were in 
imaginary tempests, concocted to illustrate a scene 
from the JEneid, or an event as in Philemon and 
Baucis, or intended to punish with violence the sins 
of men (Vienna). 

All these sincere and lovely landscapes tell of 
summer. When Rubens came down to Steen from 
Antwerp the bad season was over. Every morning 
began a warm and happy day. At dawn the deli- 
cate spires hardly showed above the mist. Sudden- 
ly, the sky became blue. The morning wind tore 
apart the silver fog, and between the clouds of wool 
that it scattered were revealed a brook, a little 
bridge, the damp soil, still wrapped in the downy 
vapours in which they had slept. On the horizon 
the sun rose dazzling, to drink up all this white 
moisture. Life had already begun, man and beast 



LANDSCAPES 147 

were about their peaceful daily duties. Under the 
level light the plain stretched its long undulations 
broken by thickets and brooks, and far away tow- 
ards Malines, almost on the blue line of the horizon, 
showed the massive outline of St. Rombaut. In 
the fields the haystacks rise, the cattle sleep. Bril- 
liant shafts of sunlight pierce even the thick trees, 
breaking the green-spotted pattern of their foliage, 
lighting the old willow stumps covered with green 
shoots and touching with a gleam the beating wings 
of a duck on the pond, or the angular back of a 
cow, standing motionless, mirrored in the water. 
But the green and blue plain begins little by little 
to grow yellow. Each day the foliage is more bril- 
liant with a splendour of gold and red, and in the 
deep woods the vivid magic of autumn spreads its 
glow of orange and vermilion mixed with the 
tender green of the last leaves, and hides the ground 
with its russet debris. The sun is low now when 
the men come back from the fields in the evening. 
As the women pass with their faggots on their heads, 
the carts drag slowly along the road in front of 
us on the horizon below a green sky, and from be- 
hind a dark, violet cloud with flaming edges, the 
sun, which has been hidden for a moment, appears. 
A crimson sun whose shafts of fire touch with stars 
the points of light on the earth and spread a golden 



148 RUBENS 

dust over the tree-tops and roofs and die before us 
little by little under the advancing shadow. If 
that carter does not hasten he will have nothing to 
light him home but the cold moon which is rising 
behind us. When Rubens left his Chateau of Steen 
to return to Antwerp, there had not been an hour of 
the day nor an aspect of nature of which he had not 
felt the tranquil charm or which he had not repro- 
duced in his own manner — broad, rapid and un- 
subtle. 

Was it not this communion with the natural life 
on this fertile, heavy soil that in a moment of gaiety 
inspired one of his happiest paintings, the Kermesse 
in the Louvre? Was it not the same inheritance 
which gave these people their appetite for brutal 
sensations, ancl which roused in the soul of the 
painter a play of delicious fancy and guided the 
hand under whose delicate and spirited touch these 
dolts tumble about on the panel? What difference 
does it make whether Rubens ever saw the scene 
that he painted or not? What do witnesses count 
who tell us that there never was a fete near Ant- 
werp to which the people did not go, "only to eat 
and drink without limit, until at the end all were 
drunk, for without that there can be no f£te here, 
for the people live like beasts"? No, the painting 
is neither an exact copy nor an accurate memory. 



LANDSCAPES 149 

I do not find in it the quality of a document, but 
the audacity and gaiety of the dream of a painter- 
poet. Where did he find this winged lyrism, this 
sovereign joyousness, which ennobles feasting, slug- 
gish digestion, the brutality of drunkenness, the 
snoring of sleepers, quarrels, stupid bets and tipsy 
amorousness? From what wild and joyous witches' 
revel had he borrowed the mad rhythm which lifts 
all the mass with the same spirit, turning the groups 
with a unique movement in which each one pulls 
and is pulled? Where had he seen these malformed, 
thick-headed boors, the females with hanging cheeks 
and portly stomachs whirling in this way, amusingly 
and with the lightness of thick-headed elfs? Where 
did the poetry come from which changed that straw 
hair into beautiful pale gold, those wenches' skirts 
and aprons and those coarse red smocks into a 
vision of will-o'-the-wisps, in lovely touches of pale 
lilac, satiny white and light blue? How in that 
skipping crowd could he see the play of exquisite 
colours which collect, cross, strike or attract each 
other and separate like a string of pearls? Is it 
not the prodigy of his art to rise to its highest 
flight, when it presses most firmly on earth and to 
reach the pure ideal while it denies nothing of the 
matter from which it was made? The heavy sap 
which fertilises the damp soil and nourishes the thick 



150 RUBENS 

vegetation on which feed the bodies of these Flemings, 
strong to work, hard against fatigue, relaxing some- 
times from the daily toil in an orgy of gross sensual- 
ity, is surely the same which boiled in Rubens' veins 
when he became a countryman. It is the original 
vitality his genius spiritualises and of which he 
multiplied the power. 



CHAPTER V 

RELIGIOUS PICTURES, MARTYRS AND "HOLY CONVER- 
SATIONS" 

Even in the earlier work of Rubens there had 
never been a page in which the sadness was not 
tempered by some ray of heavenly joy, no scene 
completely desolate and without consolation. A 
lovely Magdalen gives sweetness and tenderness 
even to the Descent from the Cross. And now, as al- 
ways, above the brutality of murder the angels come in 
triumphant glory, bringing reward and resurrection. 
This joy of soul, which is like an effulgence of the 
painter's genius, penetrates and dominates more and 
more his colour and the work of his brush, and pro- 
duces the strange anomaly of conceptions of such 
brutality as would revolt our taste and feeling if 
they were not rendered in a language which grows 
every day more lucid and more musical. Rubens 
seemed to meet tragic horror or plunge into triviality 
without fear, sure that he could always rise above 
them with a stroke of his wings. 

Fromentin has especially noted this characteristic 



152 RUBENS 

in the pictures in Brussels, the Martyrdom of St. 
Lievin and the Way of the Cross. At first glance 
the Martyrdom of St. Lievin seems a gay and fanci- 
ful fete. It is necessary to analyse the action to 
realise that it is a scene of horrible butchery. The 
lines and colours have no relation to the pitiful 
reality, but are part of the glorious dream of the 
painter. The ruthless executioners, armed with hot 
pincers, tear and burn the flesh of the holy bishop 
with gestures which are atrocious in their brutality. 
But vengeance is about to strike them; the arch- 
angels, with their hands full of thunderbolts, hurl 
themselves from the storm clouds, while engaging 
little angels are bringing the crown and palm of 
the blessed. A soldier is fleeing, terrified, his arms 
thrown up; a horseman has been overturned, and 
a great white horse is rearing and whinnying against 
the dark sky. All the actors in this short drama 
are in attitudes of suffering, cruelty or fear. 

Placed beside the St. Lievin the Way of the Cross, 
painted at the same period, has much of the same 
quality. This huge canvas has the swing, the loose- 
ness and the lack of form of a sketch. It shows 
tones which are rather indicated than painted in 
their values, colours cold, without foundation, and 
the unbridled boldness of a brush that goes straight 
to its effect, sure of the result — light, quick painting. 




THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 

Antwerp Cathedral (1611-1614, 



RELIGIOUS PICTURES 153 

It is a breathless climb up Golgotha; people and 
soldiers form the escort of the martyr; women cry- 
out, clutching their naked infants; you hear the 
clink of metal and pennants flapping in the wind; 
and below the thieves climb, poor wretches, their 
backs bent pitifully under the brutality of the 
legionaries. Simon the Cyrenean pushes the cross 
in a striking pose that one cannot forget ; the horse- 
men are superb in their pride, slender, glittering 
under their steel cuirass and helmet. The tall 
lances, the Roman eagles, a rose-coloured banner 
waving against the tragic sky, where dark clouds 
let through a few gleams of red. The strong light 
touches here and there a livid glow; as on the 
lustrous white haunch of a horse which is disappear- 
ing behind the peak. The same epic feeling pushed 
the whole procession in its march towards sacrifice. 
Who in this cavalcade and tumult could find God, 
fallen exhausted under the cross, if the peaceful, 
tender face of Helena Fourment did not bend over 
him, a Helena more lovely than ever, blonde and 
serious in her black-satin dress? The suffering of 
the Virgin is also well subordinated. Is not this 
the majestic sadness of a victorious return in the 
evening after a battle? These sombre symphonies, 
like the tragic wail of brass instruments sounding 
for death, awake in us I know not what grave and 



154 RUBENS 

uplifted courage. The genius of Rubens gives to 
this sinister cavalcade his own triumphant heroism. 

There is the same joyous translation of an abomin- 
able scene in the Martyrdom of St. Ursula,tha.t wonder- 
ful sketch in the Brussels Museum. It is Rubens at his 
best. Brutes savagely massacring young girls. The 
whole picture of a satiny grey, the flesh colours are 
young and dead, with opalescent freshness and gowns 
of yellow and blue. Around are great red limbs, 
sombre reflections from steel and the violent gestures 
of troopers who are reaping beautiful flowers. As 
usual an angel is falling from heaven bringing the 
promised happiness. The light makes this carnage 
into a delicate fete, full of caressing softness. The 
same thing is true of the Rape of the Sabines (Lon- 
don), the Massacre of the Innocents (Munich) and 
the Horrors of War (Pitti), where lovely women of 
Antwerp, sumptuously dressed and undressed, faint, 
lament and struggle against soldiers who ravish 
them and murder their children. 

Rubens' art needs to portray movement and 
make light colours vibrate. It makes no differ- 
ence whether they are expressions of joy or pain, 
scenes of carnage or pleasure, provided his rich 
palette may find opportunity to develop its brilliant 
and variegated changes on satin, velvet, metal or 
flesh. 



RELIGIOUS PICTURES 155 

But Rubens does not express himself entirely in 
this unbridled violence and splendour. There are 
more peaceful and simple scenes which harmonise 
with the tender and serious chords of his genius. 
The Holy Conversations, for example; a motive dear 
to the Primitives, who in their choice of saints, 
male and female, naively showed the manner in 
which they preferred to express their religious feel- 
ing; dear to the Venetians, who were often satisfied 
with groups of faces, provided they were beautiful; 
dear to Correggio, the painter of loving attitudes 
and looks; and finally, dear to Rubens who seems 
to rest and, as it were, detach himself from the con- 
fusion of battles and tortures in the freshness of 
these religious idylls. Rubens composed the most 
inspiring of his last works by using several faces, 
generally those of women, in affectionate positions, 
with no other thought or action but their quiet 
tenderness. What other idea but that is there 
in the Triptych of St. Ildefonso in the museum 
at Vienna? On the return of her embassy the 
Infanta Isabel had ordered from her painter a large 
triptych, destined for the high altar of the Brother- 
hood of St. Ildefonso in the Church of St. Jacques 
of Candeberg, a parish of the court. Rubens was 
chosen to honour the memory of the Archduke Al- 
bert, founder of the brotherhood. On each one of the 



156 RUBENS 

two wings — as in an early canvas by the artist, of 
the Duke and Duchess of Mantua, his first patrons — 
Albert and Isabel attended by their respective 
patron saints are kneeling in a frame of elaborate 
design and draperies. The nobility of pose and 
beauty of colour, the dull flashes of red velvet, the 
delicate shining ermine, the golden sheen on the white 
satin, all contributed to give this simple scene the 
majesty of a royal ceremony. And, in fact, does 
not a queen, in the midst of her court, resemble this 
Venetian Virgin, who, seated on her throne of shell, 
is giving a chasuble to the holy Cardinal of Toledo? 
Does not the beauty of this picture lie in those 
charming, attentive and smiling young girls and the 
graceful flight of cupids, which together give this 
scene its radiant significance, like the trills of a 
joyous orchestra? 

There is also nothing else in the Coronation of 
St. Catherine (in the Duke of Rutland's gallery) but 
a circle of sweet, pretty faces beneath flying cupids. 
Just as in the picture of St. Ildefonso and in that 
of Thomyris and Cyrus in the Louvre, the inten- 
tion of the painter is to show feminine beauty. 
His ideal has changed a great deal since the time 
when, on his return from Italy, he painted powerful 
giants in vigorous poses expressing violent emo- 
tions like those which, by their contortions, increase 



RELIGIOUS PICTURES 157 

the horror of the Elevation of the Cross. This vigour, 
borrowed from Michelangelo and Guilio Romano, has 
been softened. Giants have turned into gay laugh- 
ing nymphs with sparkling eyes, full rich bodies 
and eager gestures. And when Helena appeared 
there was a new transformation. The beings created 
by Rubens' brush were enchanting in their fair, 
fresh beauty. Like the little Antwerp girl, they all 
have ivory skins and innocent souls, the charm of 
childlike grace and feminine elegance. 

It is for this reason that there has been a ten- 
dency to recognise Helena Fourment in the picture 
which adorns the tomb of Rubens at Antwerp (The 
Virgin Surrounded by Saints in the Church of St. 
Jacques) . Romantic biographers have even thought 
that the artist, at the end of his life, had gathered in 
this picture his two wives, his father, his youngest 
son and himself in order to present to the admiring 
pilgrim who stopped at his grave a summary of his 
affection and talent. The idea is beautiful and 
deserves to be true. But there is no proof that this 
was Rubens' father, and, besides, how could he have 
forgotten, in this token of his gratitude, his brave 
old mother, Maria Pypelnickx, whose death had so 
sadly grieved him on his return to his own country 
at the very moment when he was to enjoy the fame 
which he deserved? Nor does one recognise in this 



158 RUBENS 

lovely Virgin, of a slightly Venetian type, the pleasant 
commonplace face of Isabella Brandt, nor in any of 
those stout little flaxen-haired women the small, thin 
face filled with large, placid eyes of that Susan 
Fourment whom he loved, they say, and whom he 
often painted {Fur Hat in the National Gallery 
and the Louvre). The child is certainly Helena's 
son, but it was a frequent custom with Rubens to 
paint his own children. The face of St. George 
also recalls that of Rubens, a Rubens "old, thin, 
grey, dishevelled, slightly haggard, but noble with 
inward fire" (Fromentin), though his "dishevelled" 
head is not exactly like the slightly bald head of the 
sexagenarian painter. As for Helena, is she here or 
not? What difference does it make if it was the 
remembrance of her beauty which guided his hand 
in drawing those gentle faces, if the atmosphere of 
love surrounding her is that which breathes from 
this frame? 

Observe, also, that of all his religious pictures, this 
was perhaps the only one not painted to order. 
If he chose this subject, it was because it contained 
what he wished most to express. When the picture 
was finished the artist himself directed that it 
should adorn his tomb, and thus showed that he 
gave it a special meaning and value. And cer- 
tainly this meaning is not in doubt. The picture 




HELENA FOURMENT AND HER CHILDREN 

The Louvre (between 1636 and 1640) 



RELIGIOUS PICTURES 159 

declared that the visions, feelings, the entire inmost 
soul of this man on the threshold of old age, is, as it 
were, illuminated by a radiant light, given new life 
and rejuvenated by a continuous dream of love and 
beauty. Who is more affected by the innocent 
purity of a young girl than this conjurer of coarse- 
ness and force? The Magdalen — who recalls the 
charming apparition of Helena in her little fur 
coat — holds back a black-satin robe with a grace- 
ful movement of the hands to expose a round, 
white shoulder, a rare piece of painting, and, of 
all those numberless Magdalens created by Rubens, 
is not this last child of his genius the most tender 
and appealing, this loving, quiet face full of unsatis- 
fied passion, probably unrepentant, turning her 
lazy profile and allowing her heavy tresses to fall 
over her soft, full neck? Nor has Rubens created 
a Madonna more exquisitely pure than this Virgin 
bending over her child; he has never painted any- 
thing more charmingly sweet and gentle than the 
glance from beneath her long, lowered eyelids, than 
the soft shadow cast by her face upon her breast. 
Is not this little Jesus, with his expressive gestures 
and bright eyes, the work of a father who is in 
the habit of watching for the dawning smile on 
the mouth of his child? Happy little cherubs, 
languishing young girls, innocently pure, com- 



j6o RUBENS 

pose this crown of tenderness and goodness, while 
two important personages, St. Jerome and St. 
George, in austere and noble attitudes frame the 
scene. 

The picture is priceless, broad, full, sweeping — an 
expression of rapture and yet studied, careful and 
rich in contrasts and details. The pigment is 
richer than ever, the texture fine-grained and firm, 
and the brush caresses the surfaces with a flying 
touch which has firmness, audacious tranquillity 
and force, as calm as it is assured. The colour is 
exact, but not rare in spite of its correctness; flesh 
and draperies stripped of their maternal quality 
play in a vision of enchantment. Around the 
edges strong and heavy colour, the dark gleam of 
armour and the warm pallor of a flexible body, a 
few solid forms to frame and steady this iridescent 
scene. In the centre flesh tints of pearl, amber, 
opal, rose and grey; the light is broken, diffused, 
faint, coloured by reflections deadened on the flesh 
and revealed on the lustrous surfaces, a rapid play 
of values, which soon reaches the extreme limit of 
black and white, but with shades of all possible 
richness of colour; around these an atmosphere, 
light and sweet as the tenderness which unites 
them, an exquisite fete that passes, mingles and 
reveals all the silvery delicacy of morning light and 



RELIGIOUS PICTURES 161 

the purple splendour and warm gold of the declining 
day. 

I know of no painting filled with emotion more 
intimate, more affectionate and human. At Venice 
a patrician art, proud and never abandoning itself 
to passion; in Florence an artistic culture too self- 
conscious perhaps to let itself be swept away by 
emotion. At the back of the Church of St. Jacques, 
in a little retired chapel where a radiant apparition 
gleams softly through the shadow, and these beings 
seem to be whispering their love in the silence, 
Rubens frankly reveals himself to us. A Latin in- 
scription on the slab, which confers on the painter 
the title of Apelles for all time, makes one think 
of the masterpieces in the neighbouring churches of 
that Elevation and Descent from the Cross whose 
seriousness and eloquence had at first sight pro- 
claimed a master, and of those early works so con- 
scientiously correct as to make one doubt if such a 
beginning could be improved on later. Yet until 
the end his work went on developing without any 
f alling-ofl or repetitions ; his days passed in trium- 
phant glory. Only at the end of his career a 
new emotion transformed the artist's life, rejuve- 
nated his art and tempered his energy into trans- 
ports of love. With two or three fair young heads, 
with one or two exquisitely attractive nudes with 



1 62 RUBENS 

tumultuous flights of rose-coloured angels, he realised 
a dream, he created, I know not how, something 
affecting and disturbing, like a rare flower whose 
perfume is more penetrating because the sap rises 
from more profound and hidden depths. 



CHAPTER VI 

DEATH OF RUBENS 

But Rubens' fame had made him too conspicuous 
for it to be possible for him to keep completely out 
of public life in the peaceful intimacy of his family. 
There was an ancient custom in Flanders, when 
the province received its emperors or archdukes, 
Charles V or Prince Albert, to offer them as a 
tribute of welcome an exhibition of its riches and its 
art, of all that made the glory of its cities. Though 
much fallen from its former prosperity Antwerp was 
still, and under the reign of Rubens more than ever, 
the holy city of sculptors and painters, and when, 
after the death of Isabella, the King of Spain, Philip 
IV, sent his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, to 
govern the Low Countries, the latter had hardly ar- 
rived at Brussels before the magistrates of Ant- 
werp invited him to visit their city. The reception 
which he received surpassed in splendour any which 
the people of Antwerp had ever given to anyone. 

For months they had worked at constructing 



164 RUBENS 

triumphal arches adorned with paintings and statues 
along the route which the new archduke must fol- 
low. All the painters, all the sculptors of Antwerp, 
all the friends or pupils of Rubens, Cornelis de Vos, 
Jordaens, Cornelis Schut, van Thulden, Wildens, 
David Pychaert, Erasmus Luellin, had collabo- 
rated. Rubens had given the construction plans 
— artist's designs of rather heavy richness — drawings 
for statues and sketches for paintings. With an in- 
defatigable facility he had lavishly produced mo- 
tives, which his pupils afterwards developed, battles, 
triumphs, allegorical figures and portraits; his 
imagination created living crowds of men and gods, 
and all these beings restrained their movements and 
framed their attitudes within the lines made by the 
pediments and facades. The Archduke Ferdinand 
was filled with admiration. But when he wished 
to congratulate the author of all these marvels he 
was told that Rubens was ill, and that the prince 
must visit the painter at his own house. 

Rubens' powers, in fact, were beginning to fail, 
and bodily weakness and attacks of gout were put- 
ting a limit to his activity. Already, during the 
preparations for this fete, "the entire responsibility of 
which the magistrates had put upon his shoulders," 1 

1 To Peiresc, December 18, 1634. 



DEATH OF RUBENS 165 

he had only been able to oversee the numerous work- 
shops by having himself carried about in a chair. 
The attacks became more and more frequent, and 
the letters of the archduke to the King of Spain, 
who impatiently awaited the pictures, show us the 
painter constantly checked, inactive, ill. June 30, 
1638, he wrote: "Rubens will paint all the pictures 
with his own hand to save time, but he is at this 
moment much afflicted with the gout. ' ' The malady 
became more serious and painful. January 10, 
1640, he wrote : "A new attack of gout has prevented 
Rubens from working. ' ' And on April 5th : l ' Rubens 
has been deprived of the use of both hands for more 
than a month with little hope of again taking up 
his brushes. He tries to take care of himself, and 
it is possible with the warmer weather his condition 
may improve." But he did not improve. This 
time Rubens was not able to meet his engagements. 
The pictures expected by the King of Spain were 
promised for Easter. Then for St. John's Day. 
They were not finished. 

Rubens had no illusions. He felt himself des- 
tined to an early death. "Death will soon close 
my eyes forever." 1 His friend Gerbier wrote to 
him in vain (May 13th) that "with the approaching 

J To the sculptor Duguesnoy, April 17, 1640. 



1 66 RUBENS 

fine weather he would get better and better," for 
this year Rubens was not to enjoy the summer or 
see his countryside of Steen. But weakened by 
suffering as he was, he kept the courage of his vig- 
orous years. From a picture in Vienna, and a 
very beautiful drawing in the Louvre, one can judge 
to what extent Rubens had aged, how he saw him- 
self. He does not throw on the mirror the fixed 
scrutiny of a restless, sick man with a crease of 
concentration between his brows; his eyes are al- 
ways direct and frankly open, and they are the 
same with which he had for forty years looked upon 
the world to give to his dream its glorious effect. 
The head retained its noble seriousness, with its 
twisted moustaches and long, curling hair. The 
man has preserved his masculine coquetry; he 
has a noble air beneath his wide felt hat, in his 
cavalierly draped cloak. Although his lips seem 
drawn by pain, though on his face, momentarily 
softened, suffering has left its traces, one feels, in 
spite of his decline, pride muttering as in the verses 
of Malherbe: "I am conquered by time; I yield 
to its ravages." 

The man who thus disappeared belonged to a 
generation of indomitable energy, born before the 
century of discipline, the same which had evolved 
a new order in the midst of terrible struggles, which 



DEATH OF RUBENS 167 

provided European literature with types of heroism 
and force, which gave to Corneille the model for 
his "Genereux" and "Bully" (Matamore). 

What pride could be more justified than that of 
the Antwerp master? If he considered how he had 
played a man's part, he could say honestly that 
no one of his contemporaries had won a more firmly 
established or greater fame than he. If he looked 
back over his past and recalled the names of some 
of the great men who had touched on his life, if he 
compared their fates with his present fortune, he 
could plainly see that even for the most important 
personages, kings and their ministers, it would have 
been a glorious title, that of patron of Rubens. 
Fortune did not favor them. The Duke of Mantua 
has long since disappeared, and his inheritance is 
being disputed by force of arms. "Mantone has 
just been taken by storm, by the Imperial troops 
who put to death a large part of its inhabitants. 
He felt great sorrow because he had been for many 
years in the service of the house of Gonzaga." 1 
The Duke of Lerma, dismissed like a lackey by his 
master, condemned by the law, died a miserable 
death. His successor, Olivaris, fought in the midst 
of national calamities and against inevitable dis- 
grace. Spinola died filled with disgust. Buck- 

1 To Peiresc, 1630. 



1 68 RUBENS 

ingham's career ended in his assassination. Marie 
de Medicis, wandering in exile, came to Antwerp 
and borrowed money from her painter on her 
jewels. Charles I of England, to whom his people 
refused to pay taxes, began a struggle which brought 
him to the scaffold. Rubens, when he considered 
these perishable honours, realised the enduring su- 
premacy which he had won. The peace which had 
been made on his return from Italy, which he him- 
self helped later to maintain, had been again in- 
definitely broken. War had once more broken out. 
A little while before his death the artist was able 
to hear from his own house the roar of cannon dur- 
ing the bloody massacre of Calloo. Flanders had 
been ravaged once more from north to south. 
Throughout Europe the struggle, at its decisive 
moment, had become more violent between Catholics 
and Protestants, Spaniards and Batavians, Aus- 
trians and French. There could be no sadder sight 
for Rubens. One of his last pictures now in the 
Pitti Palace symbolised the horrors of war: "This 
woman in mourning, black-robed, with torn veil, 
stripped of all her jewels and ornaments, represents 
unhappy Europe, who for so many years has suffered 
pillage, outrages and miseries, the results of which 
are beyond expression." 1 

1 Rubens to Lusterman, March 12, 1638. 



DEATH OF RUBENS 169 

He died at noon on May 30, 1640, from an at- 
tack of gout, and his funeral took place on June 
2d. All the guilds, the clergy and the religious 
orders were present. The entire city came to do 
honour to the greatest of its citizens, to him who had 
consoled it with his fame in its decline. According 
to the local custom, the funeral feasts gathered to- 
gether at his own house, at the city hall, at the 
hotels, friends, magistrates, members of various 
brotherhoods. Sums of money were given to the 
clergy and to the poor in the parishes of St. Jacques 
at Antwerp and that of Ellewyt. His estate was 
divided between Helena and Albert and Nicholas, 
Isabella's two children. His books, collections and 
pictures were scattered. A sale took place, con- 
ducted by three of his pupils, whom Rubens had 
himself appointed. The King of Spain, the Em- 
peror, the Elector of Bavaria and the King of 
Poland were represented at it. 

From now on the school of Antwerp failed rapidly. 
Van Dyck, next in greatness to the master, painted 
no more and soon died. The generation contem- 
poraneous with Rubens, his friends and pupils, 
could not be replaced as they disappeared. He 
seems to have been the only source of inspiration; 
around him there were flashes of genius; very great 
painters were conspicuous: Jordaens, Snyders, Fyt, 



I 7° 



RUBENS 



de Vos, Teniers. But there was no one who 
could continually renew the light, once the star 
had set. Even the pupils had scattered and de- 
serted the famous school. They had carried to 
London, Paris, Italy and to the German court the 
weakened voice of the new doctrine. It was Rubens 
who, through Van Dyck, taught painting to the 
English and prepared the way for Reynolds and 
Gainsborough. In France the Antwerp influence 
was at first counteracted by the ascendancy of the 
ps}rchological art of Poussin and Lebrun, but it 
survived them and created great portrait painters 
like Largilliere and Rigaud. It was to the Medici 
gallery that our graceful, charming mural painters 
of the eighteenth century went to study their 
method. And when the armies of the Republic and 
Napoleon collected the masterpieces of Flemish art, 
for a short time in the Louvre, this wealth of colour 
and life in such contrast to the depressing academic 
school, inspired more than one of the pupils of 
Guerin's studio. Delacroix studied Rubens con- 
tinuously with the dream of renewing his art. 

This immense output of work, glowing with eternal 
youth, scattered among all the museums of Europe, 
carried on the great lesson of the departed master. 
To some who regard painting as an abstract lan- 
guage, who sacrifice the pleasure of the senses to 



DEATH OF RUBENS 17 I 

that of the intellect, who express their ideas in an 
art stripped of its material covering; to those who, 
following classical expression, seek eloquence by the 
use of general terms, he showed in The Adoration 
of the Magi in Antwerp what noble enthusiasm a 
feast of the eyes can give the soul. For others, held 
spellbound by the unexpected, disorganised and 
opulent forms of nature, who limit their art to 
an exact, uncompromising copy, who know that 
feeling can be expressed without relation to matter, 
he imagines scenes which are nevertheless true, as 
in the Ascent to Calvary at Brussels and the Virgin 
Surrounded by Saints at Antwerp. Rubens reminds 
the Idealist that the eye must be sensitive and the 
hand skillful, the good craftsman that emotion 
can give life to the cleverest technique. He makes 
them understand how the careful, conscientious 
thought of a primitive Fleming can be in harmony 
with the beautiful buildings and well-balanced lines 
of the great Italian decorations; how it is possible 
to touch at one and the same time both extremes of 
art, the idealistic and the realistic, to imbue matter 
with coarseness or tenderness, and to introduce a 
cry of pure passion into a musical phrase without 
spoiling the harmony. 






J< 



THE VIRGIN SURROUNDED BY SAINTS 
Church of St. Jacques, Antwerp (between 1638 and 1640) 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



DATE 


IMPORTANT EVENTS 


PRINCIPAL WORKS 


1577 


June 28. Birth of Rubens at 
Siegen. 




1578 


Return to Cologne. 




1587 


Death of Rubens' father. Return 
to Antwerp. Rubens a page in 
the service of the Countess de 
Lalaing. 




IS90 


Entered the atelier of Tobias Ver- 
haecht, the landscape painter. 




1592 


Entered the atelier of van Noort 
for four years. 




1596 


Became the pupil of Otho Venius. 




1598 


Is admitted as freemaster into the 
Guild of St. Luke. 




1600 


Started for Italy. Arrived at 
Venice. Entered the service of 






the Duke of Mantua. 


Drawings. 


l6oi 


Visited Rome. 


Three pictures for the 
Church of St. Croce, 
Jerusalem. 


1603 
1604 


Journey in Spain. 
At Mantua. 


Portraits. 
The Holy Trinity. 
Transfiguration (Nancy). 
Drawings and Copies. 


1605 


At Rome. 


St. Gregory and St. Dotni- 
tilla (Grenoble). 



174 



RUBENS 



DATE IMPORTANT EVENTS 

1608 Death of Rubens' mother. 
Return to Antwerp. 

1609 September 23. Painter to the 

Archduke. 
October 2. Marriage to Isabella 
Brandt. 

1610 Bought a house on the Wapper. 

1611 to 1618 



161 8 Bought the collection of Sir Dud- 
ley Carleton 



1618 



PRINCIPAL WORKS 



Portraits of Painter and 
Isabella Brandt. 



Elevation of the Cross 
(Antwerp). 

Descent from the Cross 
(Antwerp) . 

Jupiter and Callisto (Cas- 
sel). 

Battle of the Amazons 
(Munich). 

Smaller Last Judgment 
(Munich). 

Perseus and Andromeda 
(Berlin). 

The Four Quarters of the 
World (Vienna). 

Hunts (Dresden, Munich). 

Progress of Silenus (Mu- 
nich). 

Miracles of St. Francis 
Xavier and of St. Ig- 
natius Loyola (Vienna) . 

St. Ambrose and St. Thco- 
dosius (Vienna). 

The Large Last Judg- 
ment (Munich). 

The Miraculous Draught 
of Fishes (Malines). 

Last Communion of St. 
Francis (Antwerp). 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



175 



DATE 



to 



l620 
l62I 



IMPORTANT EVENTS 



Commenced to paint the Medici 

Gallery. 
Trip to Paris. 
Rubens allied himself with Peiresc. 



1626 Death of Isabella Brandt. 

1627 Negotiations with Gerbier in the 

service of Spain. 

1628 At Madrid. 

1629 Ambassador to England. 

1630 Marriage with Helena Fourment. 

Rubens demanded that Spain 
should take up the cause of 
Marie de Medici. 



1632 Last embassy to the Netherlands. 

1633 Death of the Infanta Isabella, 

Rubens' patron. 

1634 Entry of Archduke Ferdinand into 

Antwerp. 



PRINCIPAL WORKS 

The Rape of the Daughters 
o/Leucippus (Munich). 

Le Coup de Lance (Ant- 
werp). 

The Straw Hat (London). 

The Earl and Countess of 
Arundel (Munich). 

Medici Gallery (Louvre). 

Conversion of St. Bavon 
(Ghent). 

Calling of St. Roch (Alost) . 

Adoration of the Magi 
(Antwerp). 

Assumption of the Vir- 
gin (Antwerp). 



Portraits. 

Sketches for Whitehall. 

Portraits of Helena. 

The Walk in the Garden 
(Munich). 

Triptych of St. Ildefonso 
(Vienna) . 

Offering to Venus (Vien- 
na). 

The Little Fur Coat 
(Vienna). 

Thomyris and Cyrus 

(Louvre). 
Martyrdom of St. Lievin 

(Brussels). 



176 



RUBENS 



DATE 
1636 
l63S 

to 

1637 



IMPORTANT EVENTS 

Rubens ill with gout. 

Purchase of the Seigneury of Steen. 



1638 Orders from the King of Spain. 



to 



1640 
1640 



May 30. Death of Rubens. 



PRINCIPAL WORKS 

The Way of the Cross 
(Brussels). 

Massacre of the Innocents 
(Munich). 

Rape of the Sabines (Lon- 
don). 

Landscapes. 

Helena Fourtnent and 
Children (Louvre). 

The Kermesse (Louvre). 

The Garden of Love (Ma- 
drid). 

Judgment of Paris 
(Louvre). 

Diana and Callisto (Ma- 
drid). 

The Three Graces (Ma- 
drid). 

The Horrors of War 
(Pitti). 

The Rest in Egypt (Ma- 
drid). 

Virgin Surrounded b y 
Saints (Antwerp). 



CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS 

OF RUBENS PRESERVED IN PUBLIC 

AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS 

It is not possible to give here a complete list of all the works of 
Rubens. The enumeration of fifteen hundred pictures would still 
leave it incomplete. For a detailed catalogue see the (Euvres de Rubens 
by Max Rooses in five volumes. We will limit ourselves to a list of 
the pictures which are best known. 

The figures which follow the letters W (wood) and C (canvas) indi- 
cate first the height and second the width in centimeters of the picture. 

GERMANY 

Berlin Royal Gallery 

Perseus and Andromeda. W. 99 XI 37 (about 1615). 
Neptune and Amphitrite. C. 305x291 (between 1615 and 1618). 
St. Cecilia. W. 177x139 (about 1639). 

Also: Raising of Lazarus, St. Sebastian, Diana Hunting a Deer, 
Andromeda. 

CASSEL. Museum 

Jupiter and Callisto. W. 126x184 (1613). 

Vicory Crowning a Hero. W. 174x263 (about 1618). 

The Virgin Worshipped by Saints. C. 257x202 (between 1620 and 

1625). 
Also: The Flight Into Egypt, Diana at the Chase. 



178 RUBENS 

DRESDEN. Royal Gallery 

Boar Hunt. W. 137x168 (about 1615). 

Also: St. Jerome in the Desert, The Drunken Hercules, The Old Woman 
with the Footstove, Portraits. 

MUNICH. PlNAKOTHEK 

Rubens and Isabella Brandt. C. 174x132 (1609 to 1610). 

Battle of the Amazons. W. 121x165 (1610 to 1612). 

Last Judgment. Small, arched panel, 182x120 (about 1615). 

Last Judgment. C. 605x474 (1618). 

Lion Hunt. C. 247x375 (1618). 

The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. C. 222x209 (1619 or 1620). 

Progress of Silenus. W. 205x211 (1618 to 1620). 

The Garland of Fruit. W. 117x203 (from 1618 to 1620). 

The Earl and Countess of Arundel. C. 261x265 (1620). 

The Walk in the Garden. W. 97x131 (1630 or 163 1). 

Helena Fourment. W. 160x134 (1630 to 1632). 

Massacre of the Innocents. W. 198x302 (about 1635). 

Susanna and the Elders. W. 77x110 (from 1636 to 1640). 

Landscapes. 

Also: The Fall of the Rebel Angels, The Punishment of the Unjust, 
The Betrayal of Samson, The Defeat of Sennacherib, Jesus and the 
Four Penitents, Faun and Satyr. Studies for the Medici Gallery. 
Portraits and Landscapes. 

ENGLAND 

LONDON. National Gallery 

The Straw Hat. W. 77x53 (about 1620). 

Rape of the Sabines. W. 170x235 (about 1635). 

Autumn Landscape. W. 135x236 (1636). 

Also: The Triumph of Silenus, The Conversion of St. Bavon (sketch), 

The Triumph of Julius Ccesar (imitation of Mantegna), The Judgment 

of Paris, The Horrors of War (sketch). 



CATALOGUE 179 

Whitehall 

Glorification of James I. A number of canvases on the ceiling (from 

1630 to 1635). 
A large number of important paintings in private collections. 

AUSTRIA 

VIENNA. Imperial Museum 

St. Ambrose and St. Theodosius. C. 362x246 (about 1618). 

The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier. C. 635x395 (1619 or 1620). 

The Miracles of St. Ignatius. C. 535x395 (1619 or 1620). 

Assumption of the Virgin. W. 458x297 (1620). 

The Little Fur Coat. W. 175x96 (after 1630). 

Triptych of St. Ildefonso. W. 352x236, wings 352x109 (from 1630 

to 1632). 
Offering to Venus. C. 217x350 (about 1631). 
Also: Head of Medusa, The Four Quarters of the World, The Child 

Jesus and St. John. Portrait of Rubens. 

Gallery of Prince Lichtenstein 

History of Decius Mus. Eight cartoons for tapestry (1618). 
Albert and Nicholas Rubens. W. 158x92 (1625 or 1626). 
Also: Erichtonius in His Basket, Sketches for the Henri IV Gallery, 
Portraits. 

BELGIUM 

ANTWERP. Museum 

Christ on the Straw. W. 139x90, wings 137x42 (about 16 18). 

Tlie Last Communion of St. Francis. Arched panel 420x225 (1619). 

Le Coup de Lance. W. 424x310 (1620). 

Adoration of the Magi. W. 447x235 (1624). 

Education of the Virgin. C. 193x140 (1625). 

Also: The Baptism of Christ, The Trinity, Venus Indifferent, The 

Virgin with the Parrot, St. Theresa Praying for the Souls in Purgatory,. 

The Chariot of Call 00, Portraits. 



180 RUBENS 

Cathedral 

Elevation of the Cross. W. 462x341, wings 462x150 (1610). 

Descent from the Cross. W. 420x310, wings 420x150 (from 1611 to 

1614). 
Assumption. Arched panel 490x325 (finished 1626). 

Church of St. Jacques 
Virgin Surrounded by Saints. W. 221x195 (between 1638 and 1640). 

Church of St. Paul 
Flagellation. W. 219x161 (1617). 

BRUSSELS. Museum 

A doration of the Magi. C . 3 7 5X 2 7 5 ( 1 6 1 5 ) . 

Assumption of the Virgin. C. 490x330 (about 1619). 

Martyrdom of St. Lievin. C. 450x335 (about 1635). 

The Way of the Cross. C. 560x350 (finished in 1637). 

Also: Venus at the Forge of Vulcan, The Coronation of the Virgin, The 

Entombment, St. Francis Protecting the World, Sketches and 

Portraits. 

ALOST. Church of St. Roch 

St. Roch Praying for the Plague Stricken. Arched panel 390x260 
(1623 or 1624). 

GHENT. Church of St. Bavon 
The Conversion of St. Bavon. Arched panel 471x281 (1624). 

MALINES. Church of Notre Dame 
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. W. 301x235 (1618 to 1619). 

Church of St. Jean 
Adoration of the Magi. W. 318x276 (1619). 



CATALOGUE 181 

SPAIN 

MADRID. Museum of the Prado 

Adoration of the Magi. C. 346x488 (1610; retouched by Rubens in 
1628 to 1629). 

Diana and Callisto. C. 202x323 (between 1638 and 1640). 

The Three Graces. C. 221x181 (1638 or 1639). 

The Garden of Love. C. 198x283 (about 1638). 

The Ronda. W. 73x101 (about 1639). 

The Rest in Egypt. C. 87x125 (between 1635 and 1640). 

Also: The Twelve Apostles (sketches for the Triumph of the Eucharist), 
The Religious Decree of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Thirty-four paintings 
of subjects from the Metamorphosis of Ovid, Portraits. 

FRANCE 

PARIS. Museum of the Louvre 

Twenty-five pictures of the Mddici Gallery. C. about 394x295 (from 

1622 to 1625). 
Lot Leaving Sodom. W. 75x119 (1625). 
Adoration of the Magi. C. 280x218 (1627). 
Thomyris and Cyrus. C. 263x199 (1632 or 1633). 
Kermesse. W. 149x261 (about 1636). 
Helena Fourment. W. 113x82 (between 1636 and 1640). 
Also: Christ on the Cross, The Triumph of Religion, Tobit and the 

Angel, Landscapes and Portraits. 

Collection of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild 

Two portraits of Helena Fourment. W. 198x122— W. 203x176 (1633 
and 1639). 

Collection of Baron Edmond de Rothschild 

Abundance. (After 1630.) 

The Garden of Love. (About 1638.) 



lS2 RUBENS 

LILLE. Museum 

Descent from the Cross. W. 425x295 (about 1615). 
Also: Ecstasy of St. Magdalen. 

GRENOBLE. Museum 
5/. Gregory. C. 474x286 (1608). 

NANCY. Museum 
Transfiguration. C. 417x675 (from 1604 to 1606). 

HOLLAND 

AMSTERDAM. Ryks Museum 
Helena Fourment. W. 74x56 (between 1630 and 1632). 

THE HAGUE. Museum 

Adam and Eve. W. 75x135 (in collaboration with Breughel about 
1620). 

ITALY 

FLORENCE. Uffizi 

Portraits of Rubens. 

Battle of Ivry. C. 394x727 (between 1628 and 1630). 

Entry of Henry IV into Paris. C. 394x727 (between 1628 and 1630). 

Also: Venus and Adonis, Isabella Brandt. 

PlTTI 

The Philosophers. W. 163x138 v i6i2 to 1614). 
The Return from the Fields. W. 122x195 (1637). 
The Horrors of War. C. 206x342 (1638). 
Also: Holy Family, St. Francis of Assisi. 



CATALOGUE 1 83 

RUSSIA 

PETROGRAD. Hermitage 

Isabella Brandt. C. 153x77 (about 1625). 
Helena Fourment. W. 187x86 (1631 or 1632). 
The Mired Cart. W. 87x129 (between 1635 and 1640). 
Also: The Feast of Herod, Christ Before Herod, Perseus and Androm- 
eda. Sketches, Landscapes and Portraits. 



NOTES ON THE DRAWINGS 

Rubens had specified in his will that his drawings should not be 
included in the general sale of his works. They were not to be sold 
until eighteen years after his death, if none of his sons or sons-in-law 
should devote himself to painting — the very thing which happened. 
The sale took place in the year 1659. The celebrated collector, Ever- 
ard Jabach, acquired a large number of them which came later into 
the collection of Louis XIV, either directly or after having been in 
the Collection Coozat. Another important group of Rubens' draw- 
ings is to be found in the Albertina collection at Vienna. 

They show characteristics differing very much, according to their 
purposes. Some were done in Italy after the works of the great 
masters of the Renaissance or the remains of antique statu- 
ary. These were drawings of great accuracy. The character 
changes according to the model (Michelangelo, Raphael, da 
Vinci or Correggio). His pencil is true, sometimes full of energy, 
sometimes weak. Rubens scarcely ever improves the contour of a 
face or hand, an incorrect form or a rather weak outline, by making a 
fuller curve. These drawings are sometimes tinted with wash. All 
this is only an aid to his memory. The Fleming, as a good Romanist, 
was unwilling to return from Italy without bringing back drawings 
as souvenirs of the Greco-Roman remains and the treasures of the 
TT atican and Sistine Chapel. 

Other drawings were made from Rubens' pictures to serve as models 
for the engravers. The latter copied more easily a small-sized repro- 
duction where the transposition of tones into values had been deter- 
mined by the artist himself. These drawings are therefore of great 
delicacy and finish. They were probably done, for the most part, by 
his best pupils, and merely retouched by Rubens, who intensified here 
and there a light or shadow with ink washes or several strokes of white. 



186 RUBENS 

But the most interesting of Rubens' drawings are the sketches done 
rapidly from nature, a body in motion, a portrait, an animal, a tree 
trunk, all the elements to be used in the composition of big canvases. 
They show that even when he studied nature, pencil in hand, he was 
already thinking how he could paint it. His line is exceedingly at- 
tractive and never repeated. It is not studied, but is a series of quick 
strokes, which are approximations more or less exact. He draws on 
the blank paper, delicately and with precision, but his drawing shows 
less the outlines than a suggestion of the play of light. Faces and 
flesh in the light are scarcely touched. Draperies and clothing, on the 
contrary, are loaded with strokes which show immediately the strong 
opposition of shadow and light and the flickering reflections. These 
drawings are almost always raised by red and white chalk. They are 
rapid notes which have the movement and warmth of life. 



NOTES ON THE ENGRAVINGS 

Rubens neglects no means by which to bring his engravings before 
the public. Thanks to his influential relatives, he obtained privileges 
in Flanders, France and the United Provinces which protected him 
from imitators. It is more difficult to express in black and white the 
brilliant colouring of his painting than that of any other artist. He 
therefore supervised with the greatest care the execution of his en- 
gravings. He chose those of his pupils who seemed to him best 
qualified for this branch of art. For their guidance he gave them very 
finished drawings and afterwards he retouched their work. Some of the 
engravings are indeed probably by Rubens' own hand (the O d Woman 
With the Candle, St. Catherine). In spite of the minute, painful slow- 
ness of the burin, one is reminded of the dashing movement of the 
brush. The engravers, trained in the painter's studio, are marked 
by special characteristics, which have given them the title of "En- 
gravers in Colour." There is, first of all, Peter Soutman, who repre- 
sents wild hunting scenes with rather a coarse stroke; then Lucas 
Vosterman, with a more delicate and flexible touch (Fight of the 
Amazons, in six plates), and his pupil, Paul Pontius, whose engraving of 
St. Roch of Alost is famous; Boetius and Schelte van Bolswert who has 
reproduced the landscapes of Steen. Lastly, Rubens himself drew 
his compositions on wood, leaving to Christoffel Jegher the task of 
engraving them. The result is wonderful, due to the expressive 
beauty of the lines. Simple outlines, rich or meagre, some well-placed 
strokes, show us Rubens' genius, the intense vitality and grace of his 
faces, everything which can be expressed in black and white. (Cf. 
H. Hymans, Engraving in the School of Rubens, in 4 , Brussels, 1879. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

L— WRITINGS OF RUBENS 

Palaces of Genoa, in folio, Antwerp, 1622. 

Unedited Letters of Rubens, published by Em. Gachet, 8vo, Brussels, 

1840. 
Rubens' Letters, published by Ad. Rosenberg, 8vo, Leipsic, 1881. 
The Correspondence and Letters of Rubens, published by Ch. Ruelens, 

under the patronage of the Communal Administration of the city 

of Antwerp. 

Vol. I to 1608 in 4to, Antwerp, 1887. 
Vol. II published by M. Max Rooses, 1898. 

Although this correspondence seldom treats of painting, the letters 
are of great importance for an understanding of Rubens' mind and 
character. He had composed several short essays which remained in 
manuscript. In a letter to Peiresc (March 16, 1636), he wrote of 
having sent an Essay on the Subject of Colour, which has not been 
found among the latter 's papers. 

He had written a short study on How to Copy Statues. De Piles said 
that he had the Latin text before his eyes, and has given a French 
translation of it in his Course on the Principles of Painting. Paris, 
1708, p. 139. 

II— WORKS ON RUBENS 

Documents to establish the facts of Rubens' life: 

Philip Rubens. — Unedited life of this great painter published by 
Jan Reiffenberg. — New Lights on P. P. Rubens. 

Memoirs in the Brussels Academy, t. X, 1835 (this biography was 
written for R. de Piles by the artist's nephew). 



INDEX 



Adam and Eve, 143. Caravaggio, 33, 76. 

Adoration of the Magi, The (Ant- Carleton, Sir Dudley, 66. 

werp), 46, 59, 69, 93, no, 171. Charles I, King of England, 117. 

Aerschot, Duke of, 119. Christ Menacing the World (Brus- 
Albert, Archduke, 15, 19, 25, 41, sels), 123. 

45, 155. Christ on the Straw, 75. 

Alva, Duke of, 3, 6. Cocxie, 12. 

Andromeda in Despair (Berlin), Colonna, Don Carlos, 117. 

135. Coronation of St. Catherine, The, 
Ascent of Calvary, The (Brussels), 156. 

171. Coronation of the Queen, The, 100. 

Assumption of the Virgin, The, 90, Correggio, 32, 57, 126, 155. 

no. Cottington, 117. 

Coup de Lance, Le, 64, 75. 

B 

Baptism of Jesus Christ, The, 23, 

30. Daughters of Leucippus, The, 64. 

Bathsheba Coming from the Bath Death of Seneca, The, 78. 

(Dresden), 133. Death of the Magdalen, The 
Battle of the Amazons, The, S3. (Lille), 123. 

Bellori, 57, 61. De Bie, Jacques, 50. 

Bol, Hans, 10. Delacroix, Journal of, 67, 123, 128, 
Brandt, Isabella, 47, 62, 68, 71, 170. 

113- De Piles, 51, 53, 79- 

Breughel, 51. Descent from the Cross, The, 70, 
Brouwer, 51. 74, 151. 

Buecklaer, Joachim, 9. De Thou, 4. 



192 INDEX 

De Vos, Comelis, 164. I 

Duguesnay, 165. 

Dupuy, P., 47, 114. Ildefonso, Triptych of St., 23, 155. 

Isabella, Archduchess, 15, 99, 114. 



E 



J 



Education of the Virgin, The 

(Antwerp), 130. Jordaens, 56, 164. 
Elevation of the Cross, The, 30, 

48, 70, 72, 157. K 

1 

Kelet, 11. 

F Kermess, The, 148. 

Fall of the Damned, The, 84. 

Felibien, 53, 57, 61. L 

Ferdinand, Archduke, 164. T , . ^ , 

pi- u f 7 + Th 6 Lalamg, Countess de, 7. 

™_ g °, „', e ' 4 ' Landing of Marie de Medicis, The, 

rourment, Helena, 62, 129, 153, & ' ' 

u ° , . Last Communion of St. Francis, 

rromentin, 128, 151. r~, 

1 ' J The, 90. 

Le Brun, 61, 170. 

G Lerma, Duke of, 20, 22, 167. 

Little Fur Coat, The (Vienna), 

Gardens of Love, The (Prado), 132. 

^3 7« Louvain, University of, 6. 

Gerbier, 117, 165. Luellin, Erasmus, 164. 

Giorgione, 126, 144. Lusterman, 168. 

Goltzius, Henri, 13. 

Gonzaga, Duke Vincenzo di, 18, ^ 

19, 22, 167. 

Government of the Queen, The, Mantegna, 29. 

78. Mantua, Duke of, 20, 22, 26, 45, 

Guichardin, 44, 141. 156, 167. 

Martyrdom of St. Lievin, The, 

H J 5 2 " 

Martyrdom of St. Ursula, The 

Hals, 59. (Brussels), 154. 

Holy Conversations, 155. Massacre of the Innocents, The 

Horrors of War, The (Pitti), 154. (Munich), 154. 



INDEX 193 

Matsys, Quentin, 8, 73. R 

Medici Gallery, The, 78, 98, 170. 

Medicis, Marie de, 18, 62, 99, Rape of the Sabines, The (Lon- 

114, 119, 168. don), 154. 

Memling, 45. Raphael, 27, 51, 83. 

Michel, Emil, 24, 47, 135. Reni, Guido, 34. 

Michelangelo, 27, 30, 48, 84, 157. Return of the Prodigal, The (Ant- 
Miraculous Draught of Fishes, vverp), 58. 

The, 89. Romano, Giulio, 29, 48, 157. 

Moretus, 50. Rooses, Max, 15. 

Rothschild, Baron Alph., 132, 139. 
Rothschild, Edw., 137. 
N Rubens, Albert, 47, 62. 

Rubens, Clara, 47. 
Neefs, Peter, 10. Rubens, Clara Joanna, 138. 

Rubens, Franz, 138. 
_ Rubens, Isabella Helena, 138. 

Rubens, Jean, 6. 

Offering to Venus The 'Vienna^ Rubens > Nicholas, 47, 62. 
unenng to venus, ine Vienna;, RubenSj Peter Paul (son)> ^ 

Rubens, Philip, 6, 25, 46. 
Rutland, Duke of, 156. 



Peiresc, 53, 164, 167. 

Philemon and Baucis (Vienna), St. Ambrose and St. Theodosius, 

146. 64, 89. 

Philip IV, King of Spain, 115, 136, St. Christopher, Brotherhood of, 

165, 169. 70. 

Plantin, Christopher, 7. St. Helena, 20. 

Pourbus, Franz, 19. St. Jacques, Church of at Ant- 

Poussin, 61, 99, 170. werp, 14, 157, 161, 169. 

Presentation at the Temple, The, St. Luke, Guild of, at Antwerp, 8, 

70. 15, 42. 

Progress of Silenus, The (Munich), Schut, Cornells, 164. 

82. Siegen, 5. 

Prosperity of the Regency, The, Small Last Judgment, The (Mu- 

101. nich), 84. 

Pychaert, David, 164. Snyders, 66. 

Pypelinckx, Maria, 6, 16. "Spanish Fury, The," 3, 41. 



194 

Sperling, Dr. Otto, 65. 
Steen, Seigniory of, 142, 166. 
Steinwyck, 10. 



Teniers, 39. 
Tintoretto, 18, 20, 51. 
Titian, 18, 35, 83, 118, 121, 

144. 
Triumphs of Truth, The, 81. 
Trumbull, William, 58, 100. 



Van der Weyden, Roger, 73. 
Van de Venne, Adrian, 40. 
Van Dyck, 57, 64, 98, 169. 
Van Egmont, 66. 
Van Eyck, Herbert, 9. 



INDEX 



126, 



Van Mander, Karl, 9, 10, 13. 

Van Noort, 14. 

Van Thulden, 66, 100, 164. 

Van Uden, 66. 

Van Veen (see Venius). 

Velazquez, 116. 

Venius, Otho, 14, 46. 

Verhaecht, Tobias, 8, 13. 

Virgin Surrounded by Saints, The 

(Antwerp), 157, j 71. 
Vouet, 99. 

W 

Walburgh, Church of St. at Ant- 
werp, 48. 

Watteau, 137. 

Way of the Cross, The (Brussels), 
59, 69, 123. 

Wildens, 66, 164. 

Woverius, 50. 



THE END 



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